Grzegorz
Piątek
Architecture critic and
curator by day, a travel
writer by night

You have just joined, or you are about to
join, the 13 million foreigners who visit
­Poland every year.
Polish hospitality, polska gościnność – you
will hear this phrase a lot from Poles. We see
ourselves as friendly, welcoming folk. Even
if it is difficult to break the ice sometimes,
even if at first a person may seem reserved
and unapproachable, once you do break
the ice, once you join the ranks of friends
and friends of friends, there is no way out.
Ask any expat who has decided to settle
in ­Poland. Even if they have been greeted
­initially with distrust and scepticism by
their workmates or future in-laws, now they
are a part of the family, or rodzina.
Try to be the first to leave a Polish party.
No way! A countryside wedding reception
can last up to three days. Sneaking out or
leaving quietly is called ‘leaving the English
way’ here. Why English and not French or
Dutch is not quite clear, but it is certainly
not the Polish way. The host will grab you

9

by the hand, propose (or insist) that you
have another slice of cake, another cup
of tea, another shot of vodka, promise
Â­another round of desert, warn you against
the weather outside, suggest you stay the
night. If you do decide to leave, in spite of
the hostâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s efforts, you will guarantee him
or her a sleepless night, tossing in bed,
recounting the whole visit and trying to
figure out what went wrong. The thought
that you were jet lagged, tired, or had
some more urgent business to attend to
would be too simple. There must have been
Â­something that offended you.
Now that you have been warned, allow us
to encourage you. 600,000+ hotel beds, not
to mention over 13 million Polish homes,
are waiting for you. We will do our best
to make you stay longer, and longer, and
longer, and make sure you want to come
back.

Poland is what it is. It is my country and
my attitude towards it is an emotional
one. But if I were to distinguish its
particular advantage, it would be the
creativity and resourcefulness in varying
circumstances. I am also pleased by two
more characteristics that have saved
our society from uniformity. These are
a tendency towards rebellion and a sense
of humour. In brief: the love of freedom
and bravado, which are hardly understood
outside our country and yet so obvious to
us – for better or worse.

13

Gdańsk’s City Hall is a backdrop
for many celebration, including
the annual St. Dominic’s Fair in
the summer

14

Żuławy – located between
Gdansk and Elbląg in the north, in
the delta of the river Wisła, is the
only part of the country located
below sea level.

15

Anne
Applebaum
Sikorska
Journalist and Pulitzer
Prize-winning author,
married to Foreign
Minister of Poland
Radosław Sikorski.
Published Gulag and
a travelogue Between
East and West, about
to release a Polish
cookbook

Poland is still a little bit more
unpredictable, a little bit more
impetuous and a little bit less
well-groomed than its western
neighbors and a lot more creative.
The music, art and architecture
can surprise you, the food will
impress you, the speed of change
will amaze you. Thanks to rapid
economic growth, every five years
Poland becomes a different country.
It grows more sophisticated, more
diverse and more interesting with
every passing year.

Robert Trzópek

Chef at some of the world’s best restaurants.
Based in Warsaw, where he runs Tamka 43
at the Chopin Centre

I could name many places in
Poland that are my little corners of the world, such as my
home city of Gdańsk, or Warsaw, a city I recently moved
to. It welcomed me with open
arms and at the same time
confronted me with a number of challenges. However,
I find that people are what
I value most in Poland. In the
time I spent working abroad,
I had the opportunity to meet
many people, some of whom
I can now count among my

friends. Yet it is only after
I had returned to Poland that
I felt surrounded by those
that are truly dearest to me.
If I were to specify the reason
I decided to return to Poland
to settle down for good after
six years working abroad,
I would have to draw up
a long list with names of
people who make my life in
this country – whether in
Gdańsk or Warsaw – more
complete and based on
authentic bonds.

16 Life

Life
Perhaps this is your first visit
to Poland. Perhaps you’ve had
a vag­ue idea of our country.
Or maybe you’ve been here before,
five or twenty years ago. Either way,
you will find the reality surprising.
The former are bound to get
something they did not expect.
The latter will be amazed how
much has changed since the
last time.
Here is a lowdown on the basic
aspects of everyday life that will
help you better understand and
navigate the country

Fat Thursday (Tłusty Czwartek)
comes on the last day of Carnival
Poles stuff themselves
with doughnuts (pączki). Expect
massive queues in front of every
bakery.
40 days before Easter, Lent
(Wielki Post) begins.

Grandmother’s Day
Dzień Babci

22

Grandfather’s Day
Dzień Dziadka

24

Christmas Eve (Wigilia)
With a range of traditional dishes that vary from
home to home and from
region to region, the holiday
is a culinary fest that Polish
homemakers prepare for
long in advance. Followed by
two days of family visits and
celebrations over Christmas
(Boże Narodzenie) and Boxing
Day.

On the last Saturday of
January or the first Saturday
of February you will see young
ladies and gentlemen in evening
dress. It is a sign of studniówka:
a traditional school dance
organized around a 100 days
before final exams that gradually
turns into an American prom-night style extravaganza.

10 ° C

Precipitation
Av
er
eg
ed
ay
te
m
pe
ra
tu
re

21

Day Duration

0°C

19

365 days and nights with a nation that loves to celebrate
no matter the economic or historical circumstances
6 am
March

April

8

Women’s Day
(Dzień Kobiet) The most
cherished leftover from the
official communist calendar.
Flower stalls spring up around
cities to cater to the needs to
men who want to surprise their
wives, ­girlfriends or that lonely
soul from the human resources
department.

60 mm

12 pm

1

May
April’s Fools’ Day
(Prima Aprilis)

Easter (Wielkanoc) – Between
March 22 and April 25, the first
Sunday after the first full moon
of Spring. Like Christmas, it is
observed in ways that differ from
home to home, depending on
regional tradition and the level
of engagement in religion. On
­Easter Monday be sure to wear
wellingtons and a waterproof
jacket. Not to protect yourself
from the rain, but from the
bucketfuls of water thrown
at you. Wet Monday (Lany
Poniedziałek) is a pagan tradition
that has survived a thousand
years of Christianity. Nobody
remembers any more why, but
you are supposed to get yourself
and others wet.

1

Labour Day (Święto
Pracy) Definitely
a labour-less day.

3

Constitution Day
(Święto Konstytucji 3
Maja) – An overture to summer
holidays. If May 1 is on Tuesday
and May 3 is on Thursday, a Pole
can get a nine-day holiday just by
taking three days off work.

In May there is the matura, the
final exam and a rite of passage
into adulthood for every
­educated Pole.

26

Mother’s Day (Dzień
Matki) is a big thing
in Poland and itovershadows
­Father’s Day (Dzień Ojca), June
23) completely. One can explain
it by the fact that for centuries
Polish fathers were distant
figures – always at work or in the
battlefield.

40 mm

21

The first day of spring,
Observed as the unoffi­cial Truancy Day (Dzień Wagaro­
wicza) by pupils around the
country. In most cases the
celebration programme includes
sneaking out of school, trying to
get a beer, sharing a cigarette
in the sun, then thinking of
ways to get away with it. A truly
formative experience.

6 pm

20 mm

first vegetables in spring season

strawberry season

white storks return from the south
asparagus season

20 Life

Polish year
June

July

21 – 24
May

August
20 ° C

June

Pentecost (Zielone Świątki)
49 days after Palm Sunday and
Corpus Christi (Boże Ciało)
– 60 day after Easter, are days off
for everybody – Catholic or not.

Day Duration

15

Polish Army Day
( Święto Wojska Polskiego)
Commemorates the battle of
Warsaw (1920) that stopped
the march of the Bolshevik
army to the west, coincides
with the Catholic celebrations
of the Assumption of Mary
(Wniebowzięcie NMP). It’s also
the peak of the holiday season,
one of the thirteen days in the
year without shopping. The
streets are empty, the beaches
look like streets swarming with
people.

sually May and June are the safest when
U
it comes to weather. The school holiday
(wakacje) starts late in June nevertheless. July
and August are a time of crowded beaches
(if weather permits) and ritual moaning
about the state of infrastructure. Somehow
people think that there is a way to transport
the whole nation in the direction of the sea
or the mountains and still manage to avoid
congestion.

apple season

strawberry season

asparagus season

cherry & sweet cherry season

harvest
mushroom picking

21

6 am
September

October

1

Elementary, middle and
high school students
return to school on September 1,
university students on
October 1.

November

In the autumn, Poles are busy making up for
the time spent on holiday. There are very few
reasons to celebrate, days get shorter so you are
better off in the safety of your office taking care
of business.

1

A
ll Saints Day (Dzień
Wszystkich Świętych)
Another day without shopping!
Millions flock to cemeteries
across the whole country to pay
respects to their (deceased)
loved ones. Unofficial start of the
fur coat season for Polish ladies.

60 mm

Av
er
ag
ed
ay
te
m
pe
ra
tu
re

Precipitation

11

12 pm

10 ° C

Theoretically, winter starts
around Christmas, but one
can expect the first snow in
November. It comes late and is
relatively mild in the south west,
grips hard and usually doesn’t
let go till well into March in the
north east.

Independence Day
( Święto Niepodległości)
A day off for everybody
(including shop assistants).

40 mm

15

Teacher’s Day
( Dzień Nauczyciela)
Teacher’s pets and their parents
rush to schools with flowers.

6 pm
20 mm

0°C
potato harvesting

22 Life

Language
Polish is spoken by some 50 million people
around the globe, including virtually all
Polish citizens and a diaspora in Europe
and North America. London, Dublin and
Chicago are the biggest Polish centres
outside Poland’s borders
It is definitely one of THOSE languages that sound opaque to the rest
of the world. Luckily, words describing technological advances, like
radio, telewizja, komputer, telefon, not to mention internet, look and
in most cases, sound familiar. Names of institutions like poczta, biblioteka, restauracja or hotel are equally comprehensible. Add to it the
vocabulary influenced by French or Latin, from the broad field of humanities, medicine and politics: filozofia, migrena, parlament. Thank
people who reinvented Polish as a modern language in the 19th and
20th centuries and kindly decided not to construct Polish-sounding
words for various imports and novelties, as was the case in Finland,
where telephone is a puhelin. Luckily, there are Polish and international equivalents for some words. You can choose between seeing
a doktor and a lekarz, seeing a theatre spektakl or a przedstawienie.
One can trace different cultural influences on Poland by the
prove­­nance of words. For instance, a lot of vocabulary that has to do
with civic culture is of German origin, as it was imported in the Middle
Ages together with the know-how on founding and running cities,
for instance ratusz (city hall, stemming from Rathaus) or burmistrz
(mayor, from Bürgermeister). Naturally, English is the biggest influence nowadays, with words like blog, hipster, hamburger and modem
that go mainstream overnight, much to the horror of purists.
Things get worse (for you) once you try to decode words describing everyday, familiar things. Most of these have ancient names that
sound familiar only to those Europeans who speak other Slavic languages, such as Czech, Slovak and Slovenian, and to the citizens of
Baltic countries who still remember their mandatory Russian from
school. How about a slice of chleb? Or a glass of woda? Confused? That
was just bread and water. If you are too shy to try your Polish you can
always order sushi and wino, but sometimes there is no choice. When
travelling from Kraków to Warsaw you can take a pociąg, a samochód
or a samolot, ­a train, a car or a plane. When strolling around a miasto
(city or town), you take an ulica (street), pass by a dom (house) with
a sklep (shop) downstairs, to reach a plac (square – that should look
familiar to Northern Europeans) or a rynek (market square). There
you will meet a mężczyzna (man) or a kobieta (woman) for a kawa

23

These are the diacritic signs used
exclusively in the Polish alphabet.
They change the pronunciation
of Latin letters considerably. Ą
sounds like something between
'oh' and 'awe' (ą-some!); Ć, Ś and

Ź are softer, baby talk versions of
C, S and Z; Ż sounds like an S in
'pleasure' or 'leisure'; Ł should be
pronounced like W in 'white'.

(coffee – easy one) or a herbata (tea, not necessarily herbal) and escape na wieś (to the countryside) to admire a krowa (cow) and run
away from a fierce pies (dog). After an adventurous dzień (day) there
is the quiet noc (night) to get to the last page of this książka (book).
Some regions have seen a revival of local dialects, somewhat suppressed and petrified under the communist regime. Kaszubs in the
north and Silesians (Ślązaks) in the south claim that their tongues
are distinct enough to be treated as separate languages, not dialects.
The official compromise is that they are ‘regional languages’ or ‘ethnolects’. The difference between them and standard Polish will not be
discernible to your ear (although Czechs and Germans will hear lots
of common words in Silesian), but you will notice double signage in
Polish and Kaszub, spoken by some 50 thousand people and taught to
some 10 thousand pupils in the region to the west of Tricity and along
the Baltic coast from Gdańsk all the way to Łeba. In the south, the Silesian regional language is spoken by at least 60 thousand people, widely
taught in schools and spoken on regional radio and television.

24 Life

Ethnic Groups
98% of citizens declare their nationality
as Polish, but you will find many other
ethnic groups contributing to the cultural
landscape of modern Poland and the cities
are becoming increasingly multicultural.
For Poland it is actually back to normal.
Before the Second World War around
30% of citizens were of nationalities other
than Polish: Jewish, Ukrainian, Belarusian,
German
Looking at the official numbers, Germans are the largest minority
in Poland, constituting around 150,000 Polish citizens. Most of them
live in Silesia, in and around the city of Opole. This region used to
be set on the fringe between Poland and Germany, changing hands
over the centuries. Now, as the border was entirely redrawn in 1945, it
sits right in the middle of southern Poland. Some villages are almost
uniquely German, not just in language (notice the double signage),
but also in their appearance – neat rows of squeaky clean houses
with manicured front lawns. The German minority is large enough
to win seats in the national parliament and to run local government
in many parts of the region.
In the east of Poland there is a natural presence of nationalities
from across the border: Belarusians, Ukrainians and Lithuanians.
Interestingly, you may see onion domes of an Orthodox church in
the west too, as several thousand Belarusians found a new home near
the German border after the Second World War. The same goes for
the Łemko minority that used to populate the mountains of Bieszczady in the south east. Many of them were forced to move west by
the communist state. The Łemko culture and architecture has been
enjoying a bit of a revival recently. In 2008 the village Bielanka was
officially given a second, Łemko name – Бiлянка.
When travelling around Poland do not be surprised if you bump
into a Greek. Many communists fled from Greece to Poland after the
coup d’etat some forty years ago and ended up staying and starting
families. Szczecin is probably the most Greek city in this country.
Recent immigration makes things complicated for the statisticians but more interesting for everybody else. For instance, officially, there are 27,172 Polish citizens of Ukrainian descent. But

25

A Vietnamese restaurant in
Warsaw – one of dozens that
have sprung up around the city
in the last decade.

nobody knows how many Ukrainians actually live in Poland on and
off – shuttling back home only to renew their visas. NGOs that deal
with Polish-Ukrainian relations estimate this number at anywhere
between 100,000 and 200,000.
In Warsaw you will notice a large presence of Vietnamese, who
have quickly become the largest minority in the city. Officially
there are about 1000 of them, in reality – 20,000 to 40,000, as evidenced by the proliferation of Vietnamese restaurants. Recently,
pho soup was even voted one of the most typical Varsovian dishes.
At the same time the capital is a natural destination for immigrants
and expats from all parts of the globe – from Nigerians to Russians,
Spaniards to Indians.
There are (officially) some 12,000 Roma in Poland. Many of them
were forced to settle and take up jobs in factories in communist days,
hence a large presence in industrial towns such as Nowa Huta (now
a district of Kraków), Mielec or Puławy and in the largest cities. It is
estimated that 30% of Roma children in Poland do not go to school,
but on the other hand there are pioneering projects such as Roma
textbooks and dedicated learning programmes. In many Polish cities wealthy members of the community are famous for the dazzling
houses they build. The Roma neighbourhood on the eastern outskirts
of Poznań, along the old road to Warsaw, is becoming something of
an alternative tourist attraction.

26 Life

Faith
According to official statistics, 34.6m out
of 38m citizens of Poland are members
of some religious group. Over 33m are
­Roman Catholics
The ties between the nation and its main religion strengthened
first after the Second World War and then in the seventies when
churches and catholic institutions became places of resistance or
at least a break from the omnipresence of the communist state.
John Paul’s II presence in the Vatican and his visits to the home
country became a source of strength for Poles – religious or not.
As a result of this religious resurgence, some 2000 churches were
built between 1976 and 1989. Statistics aside, the relationship between the church and the nation is more complex. There are different levels of engagement within the majority. To be baptised does
not necessarily mean to be a devout Catholic. When asked about
moral choices, Poles frequently disagree with the church’s official
stance. In big cities, such as Warsaw and Łódź, attendance on Sunday mass has been decreasing gradually. One thing is certain, Poles
are very much attached to their rituals and are eager to show it at
Christmas and Easter and on rites of passage such as weddings,
christenings, first communions or funerals. In some bigger cities
bishops are important figures of public life (for example Kraków’s
Stanisław Dziwisz - the former personal secretary of John Paul II)
and it is hard to imagine the opening of a new school or new stretch
of a motorway without them.
Small as other denominations may seem in proportion to the
Catholic majority on the scale of the whole country, a Protestant
or a Russian Orthodox can find a church in every major city. Sometimes it is a sign of a lively local community, sometimes a testimony
to the city’s multicultural past, as in Łódź, dubbed a ‘city of four religions’ before the Second World War. There are very few mosques
and functioning synagogues, but their number has been growing
over the last years. The plan to build a new mosque in Warsaw
caused a local media storm. However, there are cities and regions
in Poland where non-Roman Catholics constitute a sizeable group.
One example is Białystok and its immediate surroundings, where
school holidays double up because of a large Orthodox community. On the southern end of the country, close to the Czech border,
around Cieszyn and in the valleys of the Beskid mountains, there is
a lively Protestant community.

27

Roman Catholic
The life of Poland’s religious
majority revolves around
popular pilgrimage sites such
as this one, built in Łagiewniki
(a neighbourhood of Kraków),

where Saint M. Faustina
Kowalska is worshipped. The
Pauline monastery on Jasna
Góra in Częstochowa with the
celebrated icon of the Black

Madonna (a miniature of which
Lech Wałęsa has famously worn
in his lapel) remains the heart of
Polish Roman Catholicism.

28 Life

Faith

1

2

Orthodox >1
The Orthodox minority is
particularly visible on the
eastern fringe of the country, in
and around BiaĹ&#x201A;ystok.

29

Protestantism >2

Islam >3

Judaism >4

The biggest Protestant
community lives in the region
around Cieszyn, in the south of
Poland.

Historically, Islam was
represented by the Tatar
minority in the east.

Judaism has become nearly
non-existent in Poland after the
Holocaust, but recent years have
seen a revival.

3

4

30 Life

Weather

Poland is situated between the
mild climate zone of Western
Europe and the continental
climate of the East, responsible
for harsh winters and hot
summers. This means an exciting
variety of natural phenomena:
aÂ sudden explosion of vegetation
in spring or the so-called golden
Polish autumn. This also means
our lifestyles, wardrobes and
architecture have to be suitable
both for -20 and +35 degrees.

ďťż

31

When contemplating what to bring to
Poland for a winter holiday a few years ago
a well-known Brit asked if there were really
polar bears in this country. No, dear reader,
there are no polar bears living in Poland,
apart from perhaps some rather lonely ones
at the zoo. However, it does get cold
So, what to bring by way of clothing? The summer, which often
seems to start off very strong in May and then flatters to deceive
in June and July, before returning with a glorious â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but often all
too brief - revival in August and September, can be glorious but
given climate change and other factors is not as predictable as it
once was. In winter, however, temperatures can drop to below zero
(Celsius) and in the north-east of the country can even fall as low as
-25 degrees - and the winds can bite, so a big warm coat and decent
boots/shoes are a must. Gloves, hats, scarves might also play a role
here, between late October and mid-March.
Sartorial elegance, a very Polish vice, can often just go out of
the window in the depths of the winter, elegant women wandering
around cocooned in what appear to be sleeping bags from their ankles to the tops of their heads. When they emerge, of course, Polish
womenfolk turn into butterflies.
Most men of course couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really care less, but the winds
are as cold for them as for our lovely butterflies, and a warm coat
might work here too. The snow can also destroy even the best pair
of training shoes, bitter personal advice from the experienced:
bring warm boots, preferably lined, maybe even with polar bear
fur, who knows?

32 Life

Dos & Don’ts
Who’s that speaking?
You shouldn’t be surprised to hear Elizabeth Taylor or Kate Winslet
sound like a wolf pretending to be a granny. Almost all the foreign
shows are dubbed over by a speaker who reads out all the dialogue
with one voice. The speakers, known as lektorzy, are audio celebrities here with some voices firmly attached to certain shows. Some
channels were trying to challenge this custom by introducing subtitles but had to go back to the old ways sooner or later, forced by
letters from disgruntled viewers and sharp drops in ratings.

Feel the heat
We know what a real winter is and we have learnt to abuse central heating at every possible occasion. Do not be surprised to find our homes,
offices and shops obscenely overheated, in spite of shrinking resources.
Climate change? What climate change? It was -10 this morning.

The secret language of kissing
The Polish kissing code is very vague and liberal. When you’re greeting a friend you can exchange somewhere between one and three
kisses, the exact number is a matter of personal judgement. Kisses
are exchanged eagerly between women, more reluctantly between
a woman and a man. Between men a handshake or a bear hug is just
enough, except for close relatives or very very good or long-missed
friends. A kiss on the woman’s hand is treated by some as a sign of old
fashioned chivalry, by others – as disgusting and uncivilised.

Turkey-ish
Slowly ousted by the omnipresence of espresso machines, so-called
Turkish coffee used to be the proper coffee for an average Pole. If
you want to try the thick, strong brew, vaguely reminiscent of actual
Turkish coffee, look out for kawa po turecku on the menus or startle
a waiter at a posh restaurant by asking to give you one.

Lemonheads
Taking tea with milk is considered English extravagance in Poland.
The proper way is to put a slice of lemon in it.

33

My Home is My Mosque
Make sure to wear nice socks! Officially, taking your shoes off when
visiting somebody’s place is considered a faux pas, but you may be
asked to do so in many homes, especially in the countryside.

Polish whispers
Beware, Italians, Spaniards, Greeks and other hot-blooded Mediterraneans! At family functions Poles can get very loud indeed, but raising your voice in a restaurant, on a train or in a street often comes
across as rude or an act of desperate attention-seeking.

‘No’ does not always mean no
It is embedded deep within the nation’s psyche that it would come
across as rude to answer too enthusiastically to an offer of a drink or
a snack. The first answer is usually nie, dziękuję (no, thanks), no matter how hungry or thirsty on is. This will be undoubtedly followed by
repeating the offer (może jednak?), to which you are allowed to answer a hesitant poproszę (yes, please) accompanied by many maybes,
thankyous and excuses.

Get stuffed
Once you think you are done eating what you first so politely refused
to eat, you will undoubtedly be offered another one, and another
one. The ritual will be repeated. Refusing at least one extra bite will
probably taken as an offence.

Seat etiquette
On public transportation, in waiting rooms, airport lounges, in hotel
lobbies – wherever you are and there are no seats left, keep your eyes
open and make sure to offer yours to any woman (unless of course
you are one yourself), an elderly or a disabled person, a pregnant
woman or a woman with a baby. One out of ten of the persons you’ll
consider senior citizens make take offense because they still like to
think of themselves as middle-aged, but the rest will appreciate your
courtesy.

34 Life

Food

Robert
Makłowicz
Food connoisseur,
author of books on
gastronomy and
a TV chef

When I travel around Poland and feel like
eating something when I happen to be, say,
in Kaszuby, in the northern part of Poland,
I don’t look for a pizzeria or a restaurant
with cuisine from Podhale in the south, but
for a place that offers dishes from Kaszuby.
Similarly, in the mountains I avoid venues
with food from Wielkopolska (the region
around Poznań), because I want to eat
something from Podhale
Over the last dozen or so years – especially after Poland’s accession to the European Union – Poland has seen a revival of regional
cuisine. Before we joined the EU, there were lively debates about
the concerns of losing national identity, but the outcome was quite
the reverse. With the possibility of registering regional products
granted by EU law, local delicacies have witnessed a renaissance –
we return to traditional methods of cultivation and production. If
someone feels like having a taste of regional dishes, they will have
such a chance in almost every place in Poland.
Polish cuisine abounds in exquisite dishes and regional delicacies. Probably the most famous Polish titbit is oscypek. But we
also have kiszka ziemniaczana – which looks like a sausage but is
stuffed with potatoes grated with bacon; piróg biłgorajski a dumping which in turns resembles pâté, prepared from potatoes and
buckwheat groats with a bit of white sour cheese or żurawinówka,
dense cranberry alcohol. In the region of Lublin, you can also have
a taste of excellent plum jam. Apart from that, I would recommend
all sorts of groats (kasza), very characteristic of our cuisine, and
popular in a limited number of places in Europe. We are also one of
the few countries of the world where mead – the oldest alcohol our
civilisation remembers – is produced on a considerable scale. Climate change has provided for the possibility of growing wine again.
More and more vineyards are emerging not only in Podkarpacie
(Subcarpathia), but also in the area of Jasło and Dolny Śląsk (Lower
Silesia). I’ve had an opportunity to have a sip of gourmet wine from
the vicinity of Wrocław.

35

From the mountains in the south
to the sea in the north â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Polish
cuisine varies from region to
region. Recent years have seen
a rise of interest in local recipes
and ingredients. Oscypek >1

1

is a smoked cheese made of salted
sheep milk exclusively in the Tatra
Mountains and is a protected
product under the EU regulation
on geographical indications and
designations of origin.

36 Life

Food

37

Anne Applebaum – Sikorska

Journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, married to
Foreign Minister of Poland Radosław Sikorski. Published Gulag
and a travelogue Between East and West, about to release a
Polish cookbook

Living for a time in the P
­ olish
countryside, I learned how
to cook with what was ­local,
fresh and available: the
uniquely Polish combinations
of meat and dried fruit, of
wild mushrooms and kasha,
of sour soups and spicy sausage, of home-made jams and
pickles, all of these made
sense in a place with plentiful plums, abundant game,
forests full of exotic mushrooms and eggs so fresh they
still had feathers stuck to
the shells

38 Life

Getting Around

1

The Polish network of roads and rail足ways
differs from region to region. Better check
with a local before choosing the best mode
of getting from point A to point B: plane,
train or car

39

The main train station in Kraków
is being transformed into a large
transit hub, with a coach terminal
and a direct railway link to
the airport. >1 Long gone are
the days when flying abroad

meant a mandatory commute
to Warsaw’s Chopin Airport.
Regional airports are growing
fast and offer more and more
direct connections to European
cities. >2

2

By Plane
If you are flying in from abroad, you are most likely to arrive at Warsaw’s Chopin Airport, since it is the largest air hub in Poland. It handled
nearly 8.7 million passengers in 2010 or 42 % of traffic in Poland, 90%
of which was international. Currently, it handles regular flights to circa
90 destinations worldwide, with London and Frankfurt ranking as the
most popular. Recently new direct connections were opened to places
like Beirut, Tbilisi, Hanoi and Yerevan. Eating up more and more of Warsaw’s share in the market are regional airports that have experienced
an unprecedented growth in recent years, serving more and more international destinations. Kraków and Gdańsk are competing for second
place after Warsaw. Most domestic traffic goes through Warsaw anyway
– with nearly a million passengers a year. Regular services operate to
Bydgoszcz, Gdańsk, Katowice, Kraków, Poznań, Rzeszów, Szczecin and
Wrocław. The most popular of them are Gdańsk and Wrocław, which
makes sense since the 50 minute flight, even with the commute to and
from the airport and a wait beats the train ride by half. For Szczecin and
Rzeszów it makes even more sense. Although flying around the country
has democratised recently, a domestic flight is still a great opportunity
to meet Polish MPs and other important (but not wealthy enough to fly
by private jet) figures.

40 Life

Getting Around

1

By Train
Most of the fast connections operated by Intercity go via Warsaw, which
makes its main station, Warsaw Centralna, the busiest hub in Poland,
serving over 20 million passengers each year. It takes under 3 hours to
get from Warsaw to Kraków, Katowice and Poznań, which makes taking
a train to these destinations more sensible than flying. EuroCity trains
from Warsaw to Berlin and from Katowice to Vienna make sense too, at
5 and a half hours, since they are comfortable and considerably cheaper
than the plane. Intercity was wise enough not to dispose of dining cars
when it came to savings. Their WARS restaurants on wheels are a real
treasure, with comfortable seating and a menu that consists of meals
freshly prepared on board. The schnitzel (kotlet schabowy) remains
a firm favourite among the regulars.
The train system is one big construction site nowadays, which is logical
if you consider how long the railways have suffered from lack of investment and basic maintenance. In this state of a perpetual revolution, the
trains speed up and slow down, the rolling stock varies in quality, and the
tariff is far from comprehensive, but this is about to improve soon. Some
key projects will be finalised in 2011 and 2012, including the renovation of
hitherto neglected grand stations in Warsaw, Gdynia, Katowice, Poznań
and Wrocław and the modernisation of the Warsaw-Gdynia line.

41
>1 The train network is

>2 The road infrastructure

particularly dense in the western
and southern parts of the
country, but Warsaw has the
fastest connections to other
major cities.

is improving rapidly thanks to
European funds and massive
spending from the government.
Soon it will be possible to cross the
country from east to west on the

A4 or the A2, and from north to
south on the A1

2

By Car
Petrol in Poland is one of the cheapest in the EU: 5.09 zł or €1.25 per
litre (as of March 2011). The network of motorways is better developed
in the east-west direction – the A4 takes you from the German border
(in Görlitz/Zgorzelec) to Wrocław, Katowice and Kraków and further
east, in the direction of Ukraine. The A2 has almost reached the German
border in Świecko / Frankfurt an der Oder at the western end, spans
western Poland all the way to Łódź, and is set to reach Warsaw in 2012.
The north-south A1 – linking the Tricity area (including the ferry terminal in Gdynia that connects Poland and Scandinavia) with the Czech
border via Toruń, Łódź and Katowice is in various stages of construction or modernisation. Other than that the network of motorways
and expressways – despite major ongoing investments – is, frankly
speaking, underdeveloped and some of the large cities, like Poznań and
Wrocław or Wrocław and Łódź are linked via perpetually congested
two-lane roads, so on some of these routes it is advised to consult a local and choose a train or a plane instead. Coach services operate around
the country, filling in for trains in the east and in the north where the
network is sparse. Even though they are no longer operated by the state
monopoly PKS, this acronym is almost a synonym for a coach station
(dworzec autobusowy) around the country.

42 Life

Sports

1

2

43

9 percent of Poles cite sports as their
favourite pastime, after home entertainment,
cinema, dining and tourism. They are
outnumbered by sports fans, who visit the
stadiums and pay for satellite tv to keep up
with the latest scores. Football and speedway
remain the most popular disciplines, until
a sudden surge in interest when a Polish
team or a Polish athlete enjoys a spectacular
success. This was recently the case with
women’s volleyball (the ‘golden girls’) and ski
jumping (thanks to Adam Małysz’s countless
victories in world tournaments and his four
Olympic medals). At the same time, health,
fitness and wellness are becoming the
nation’s main focus. This is good news not
just for pharmaceutical companies. A running
craze is sweeping the country, an aquatic
sports centre is every ambitious mayor’s
flagship project and in big cities the number
of people who choose the bicycle as their
daily means of transportation is rising fast.

>1 A modern take on a sleigh-

>2 Polish lakes and seaside draw

ride in the Polish mountains.

surfers from around the country.
Hel Peninsula and Łeba are the
most popular destinations for
wind- and kite surfers.

44 Life

Sports

Travel

45

Zalew ZegrzyĹ&#x201E;ski, an artificial
lake north of Warsaw, is a centre
of watersports in summer and
an impromptu ice skating rink
in winter.

46 Life

Sports

Travel

47

Polish summer sometimes starts
in May and Poles eagerly use the
first opportunity to escape to the
Baltic beaches.

48 Life

Sports
Euro 2012

Warsaw
The opening ceremony will take
place at the National Stadium
(Stadion Narodowy). The 55,000
seat arena was erected directly

on top of the old Centennial
Stadium. It is meant to resemble
a wicker basket, enveloped in
light mesh panels in white and
red â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the colours of Polish flag.
The 80-tonne, 70-metre steel

spire above the football pitch
was made in PoznaĹ&#x201E;, shipped
to Warsaw in three pieces and
assembled on site .

49

Regardless of the changing fortunes of the Polish
team, football is the most popular sport in Poland.
The Prime Minister, Donald Tusk is not just a fan,
he is an avid football player himself. No wonder he
made it a point to build ca. 3,500 quality football
pitches, serving also as public sport and leisure
facilities, in small towns and villages around the
country. Football rookies compete for the Donald
Tusk cup and they practice on pitches branded
orliki, all meant to be a part of preparations for the
2012 UEFA football championship. They double
as venues for local events and are meant to be a
tool for fighting social exclusion. Hosted by Poland
and Ukraine between 8Â June and 1 July of 2012,
the event is set to be a major draw for visitors
from around Europe.
Poland is expecting up to a million extra visitors
that year, including football fans, journalists,
officials, not to mention football players and
their entourages. All eyes will be set on the new
stadiums constructed in four Polish cities for this
event.
For Poland, EURO 2012 is more than just
a football tournament. It is a giant infrastructural,
organisational and social project, largely
contributing to the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rapid and significant
development. All Poles will be hosts of this
spectacle, showing a new face of the country
celebrating together.
for more see 2012.org.pl

50 Life

Sports
Gdańsk >1

Wrocław >2

Poznań >3

The second largest of Poland’s
Euro 2012 stadia is Gdańsk’s
44,000 capacity The PGE
Arena. The shape and color of
the stadium, bedecked with
translucent panels, references
amber. PGE Arena will light up
Letnica, a hitherto neglected
neighbourhood close to the
harbor.

The stadium, located west of
the city centre, close to the
airport, was designed by JSK
Architekci, the architects of
Warsaw’s National Stadium.
Wrocław’s 42,000 seater, like
PGE Arena, is designed to glow
in the dark, changing colours
depending on the character of
the event.

Poznań was the first of Polish
host cities to complete its Euro
2012 venue – an upgraded
and expanded version of the
Municipal Stadium (Stadion
Miejski) dating back to 1980. It
doubles as the homebase of the
local team: Lech Poznań.

1

51

2

3

52 Cities

Cities
The fastest way to immerse yourself in
contemporary Polish culture and to get
aÂ crash course in its history, is to head
for one of the urban centres. But, mind
you, every city offers a different version.
Poland was split between three empires
throughout the nineteenth century and its
borders shifted completely in 1945. Cities
and regions developed on quicksand, seeing
entire ethnic and social groups come and
go, absorbing various influences. Thus, each
one displays a unique architectural and
social landscape and has its own flavour
of modern Poland. Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s your favourite
flavour?
On the next pages you will find portraits
of twelve biggest agglomerations
accompanied by insider tips from locals.
Pack your bags!
Key to symbols used in Cities section

population of the whole agglomeration
number of students
average monthly gross salary in euros
number of sunlight hours a year
nearest airport / distance from city centre

53

03

08
11

09
07

01
05
10

06
02
Population

12

04

Agglomeration
City
0.5m

1m

02

Warszawa

07

Poznań

Central Europe’s most dynamic metropolis

So much more than a business city

02

Silesia & Katowice

08

Szczecin

A post-industrial conurbation on the rise

A sea port far from the actual sea

03

Tricity Gdańsk / Gdynia / Sopot

09

Bydgoszcz / Toruń

Three (at least three) cities in one

Two capitals of one region

04

Kraków

10

Lublin

A new face of the old capital

A gate to the East

05

Łódź

11

Białystok

Culture fills factories

City of many cultures and religions

06

Wrocław

12

Rzeszów

On the crossroads of European history

A small giant

54 Cities

01

Warszawa
3.2m

291 000

1126 €

2258 h

Warsaw Chopin Airport / 8 km

key to icons on page 52

Warsaw’s mermaid
(syrena), a half woman,
half fish holding a sword
and a shield is a symbol
of the city’s heroic past
and today’s energetic
attitude. You will find
hundreds of versions:
on the fountain in the
Market Square and on
a monument on the
waterfront boulevard,
on school buildings,
trams and buses and on
football fans’ graffiti.
This one adorns the
Stolica cinema house
(currently under
renovation) and was
sculpted in the forties.

Once considered a distant, slightly
embarrassing relative, Warszawa (Warsaw)
is now on the fast track to becoming first in
line to inherit Berlin’s mantle as Europe’s
coolest city. With glowing reviews from
enthusiastic visitors, word-of-mouth is
spreading fast. People flock to Poland’s
capital in search of culture, nightlife, and
that elusive buzz that seems to be growing
ever stronger
Legend has it a young fisherman named Wars was casting his nets
one night when he came upon a mermaid. He was so taken by the
sight and the voice of the creature, he proposed to her. His love for
her caused her tail to turn into legs, and she took on the human
name Sawa. Wars and Sawa lived happily ever after on the shores
of the Wisła (Vistula), and the settlement they founded bore their
joint names. At first sight, there is little romance to be found along
the Wisła’s banks now. Varsovians are fiercely proud of their city,
but newcomers may not immediately appreciate the city’s charms.
Entering Warsaw from the East, each bridge – be it the century-old
Poniatowski or the latest addition, the Świętokrzyski – ensures a picturesque view, a skyline dotted with church spires, tower blocks and
skyscrapers. But once you get to the city, it takes a good guidebook
or an informed local to reveal the best the city has to offer. It can
be found inside hard-edged public buildings, such as the Palace of
Culture and Science or the National Opera, in private apartments
turned galleries, in secret gardens, hip bars and specialist shops. The
city may seem a different place on every visit. It changes rapidly and
it takes on a different appearance each season. In the summer it’s

55

Warsawâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s skyline is dotted with
more and more skyscrapers,
making it one of the tallest cities
in this part of Europe. Eleven of
the highest buidings in Poland are
located here.

56 Cities

01 Warszawa

Warsaw University Library
(BUW) offers a spectacular view
of the skyline and the river from
its one hectare rooftop garden,
composed entirely of plants that
are native to Central Europe.

a relaxed city of cyclists zooming through the parks, in September
and May – a cultural capital buzzing with festivals, concerts and exhibition openings. In winter, it turns inward.
All but erased in the Second World War, Warsaw was gradually rebuilt from the rubble and reached the pre-war population of
1.2m around 1970. Tourists marvel at the quaint Old Town, but their
awe turns to astonishment on learning that the medieval-looking
buildings date back to the 1940s and ‘50s. Another popular attraction is the gift from the USSR and the tallest building in Poland – the
Palace of Culture and Science. Completed in 1955, a bizarre hybrid
of Manhattanism and Stalinism peppered with loose references

lery of Art (pl. Małachowskiego 3,
tue – sun: 12 pm – 8 pm, normal
15 PLN, reduced 10 PLN, thu: free
entry) established over 150 years
ago. The gallery building was
constructed at the turn of the
19th and 20th centuries. The exhibitions present the latest art by
the most interesting Polish and
international artists.
When in search of the local
flavour, head to Magazyn Praga
(ul. Ząbkowska 27/31, tue – fri
11 am – 7 pm, sat – sun: 12 pm – 4 pm),
that sells innovative, modern
pieces by Polish and foreign designers.
On the other side of the river,
there are many cool shops on
Mokotowska street: boutiques
of the best Polish fashion designers, cafés and unique restaurants.
A Warsaw night club crawl
can start from the bar Warszawa
Po­wi­śle >1 ul. ­Kruczkowskiego3B,
daily from 10 am). This is quite
an unusual place – the bar’s modernist interior has been adapted

from the former, tiny, Warszawa
Powiśle railway station. There
is a lot going on there: cultural
events, concerts, lectures and
great musical events. Straight
from the bar, hop on a train that
will take you over the Wisła to
the district of old Praga, on the
east bank of the river. 11 Listopada Street is the hub of decadent
alternative clubs
A walk along the Wisła riverfront is the perfect way to relax
on the following morning. The
banks of this partly untamed
river running through the very
heart of the city offer wonderful
wild beaches, often frequented
by Varsovians on sunny days. If
you are up for a longer excursion
visit the vast Zalew Zegrzyński
/ Zegrzyński Reservoir, Puszcza
Kampinoska / Kampinos Forest or Puszcza Kamieniecka /
Kamieniecka Forest. Wilderness
still abounds here despite the
proximity to the large urban agglomeration.

58 Cities

Warsaw is said to be a city
without a centre. But if you need
to catch a bus, a tram or a train
in any direction, the best bet is

01 Warszawa

to head to Rondo Dmowskiego:
a big roundabout next to the
biggest underground station and
the central railway station.

59

60 Cities

01 Warszawa

The Palace of Culture and
Science, built in the fifties, as
a ‘gift’ from the Soviet Union is
the city’s main orientation point,
a loved and loathed element of
the skyline.

to Polish historical architecture. Until recently, the city has tried
to ignore its presence, many have campaigned to get rid of it altogether. But to the new generation, the Palace is as much a symbol
of Warsaw as the Mermaid, and its communist connotations have
ceased to be significant. The edifice – itself home to several cultural
institutions – is finally being reintegrated into the fabric of the
city. Behind it loom the towers of Warsaw’s new business centre
– a living monument to Poland’s economic power and the confidence of its private sector. At their base is another communist-era
landmark that is just now returning to favor: the Central Station,
hastily completed for Leonid Brezhnev’s visit, it was considered an
irredeemable eyesore for decades, until a quick scrub proved that
under the grime lay hidden a modernist masterpiece. This feeling
of reinvigoration extends to Krakowskie Przedmieście, part of the
Royal Route connecting the Old Town to former royal residences
in the south. Come summer, the partly pedestrianised boulevard,
which has undergone major renovation work in the past few years,
teems with people; significantly, not all of them are tourists. Cafes,
bars and restaurant gardens line the pavement, along with granite
benches that each play a different Chopin tune – erected there in
2010 as part of the composer’s bicentenary celebrations.
Fryderyk Chopin, widely considered to be the world’s most
famous Varsovian, also lends his name to Warsaw’s airport. The

61

Agata Michalak

Editor-in-chief of Aktivist, a free
culture and lifestyle magazine

The part of Warsaw that should
definitely be explored is Praga,
my home district, which for various reasons I consider to be more
authentic than the more elegant
city centre on the opposite bank.
I like ul. Ząbkowska a lot – not
only its recently renovated segment with a distinct pavement,
but also the hidden, unrestored
part of the street lined with tenement houses and the intriguing
architecture of the Koneser vodka distillery. This area is slowly
filling up with cosy cafes.
The 19th-century building
on the corner of Ząbkowska
and Targowa, which is Praga’s
main street, houses a milk bar
(Ząbkowski Bar Mleczny,
ul. Ząbkowska 2, mon – fri:
7 am – 7 pm, sat: 7 am – 6 pm,
sun: 9 am – 6 pm), a place worth
dropping by in to immerse oneself in the aura of the bygone
(communist) times.
Ząbkowska, along with the
nearby Inżynierska and 11 Listopada streets make for a route
I am happy to show my guests as
a living testament to the history
of Warsaw and the multifarious
contrasts that currently characterise the city. A number of places

For shopping opportunities
one should head for the centre
and Powiśle – a district near the
Wisła river. I recommend a visit
in Love & Trade boutique >1
(ul. Solec 18/20, mon – fri: 6 pm –
7pm, sat: 11pm – 7 pm), situated in
1500 m2 do wynajęcia / 1500
square meters for rent club. The
place was created by a group of
young artists and fashion designers who aim at promoting various
Polish fashion brands.
I also like to drop by Blind
Concept Store >2 on Mokotowska street (ul. Mokotowska
63/100, 11pm – 7 pm). They
offer very original jewellery and
various gadgets that make for
great presents.
A new and very exciting annual event in the city’s calendar
is the Warsaw Music Week (in
May). The festival promotes Warsaw’s independent music scene,
presenting everything that is interesting and important in different clubs, along with independent acts from all over Europe.

62 Cities

01 Warszawa

The Copernicus Science Centre
(Centrum Nauki Kopernik) is
an innovative science museum
completed on the waterfront in
2011. It drew 200,000 visitors in
its first three months.

proximity of the terminal to the city is its greatest asset, soon to
be strengthened by the opening of a rail link that will cut the commute to the city (and the trip from your home country) to mere 15
minutes. Another reason to finally discover the Central European
metropolis for yourself.

63

Mariusz Szczygieł

Reporter for the Gazeta Wyborcza daily, expert on Czech culture,
his book Gottland won the European Book Prize in Brussels as the
best European book of 2009
Skład Modernista >2
Hoża 9c daily, best to make
a prior appointment with the
owners: + 48 500 565 448

1

Restauracja Rozbrat 20
ul. Rozbrat 20, mon-thu:
7.30 am – 11 pm, fri: 7.30 am – until
the last guest, sat: 9.30 am – until the
last guest, sun: 9 am – 10 pm
This is a small restaurant by
a park, reminiscent of French
bistros, crammed with people
sitting back to back. The simple,
light-filled interior has black
and white décor with starched
white tablecloths and flowers.
The menu offers just a few light
dishes: Parisian broth, sardines
with marakuja, St. James mussels
with a black ink risotto. One of
the most demanding restaurant
critics in Poland, columnist for
the influential Polish daily Gazeta
Wyborcza, once came to this
restaurant to write a review. He
ate and was so impressed that he
did something he had never done
in all his years as a restaurant
critic. Due to the excellence of
the cuisine at Rozbrat he named
the chef in his review (Łukasz
Guziński). The talents of this chef
are now well renowned.

ants of the Jabłkowski brothers,
former owners of Warsaw’s largest department store. Our capital
has a harsh appearance and you
have to look carefully to discover
its hidden beauty. These photographers have a great deal of affection for the city. The exhibition
is part of a non-profit initiative,
inviting anyone to photograph
the city, with a professional jury
deciding which photographs will
be displayed in the courtyard.
About thirty large-format photographs are on exhibit at any
one time, and I go there every
fortnight as the exhibits change
on the 1st and the 15th of every
month.

Galeria Jabłkowskich in the >1
inner courtyard ul. Chmielna 21,
entry from the gate on the street,
mon-thu: 6 am – 10 pm
This is a free gallery in a courtyard, under open skies. Splendid
photographs of Warsaw adorn
the walls of a tenement house
that belongs to the descend-

2

This is a place for those in the
know. You have to walk past the
building at Hoża 9 and then immediately after it go to the end
of the courtyard alongside the
old dilapidated building with the
1 zł coin mural, which will soon be
lost forever as the paint is peeling
off. Tucked away on the ground
floor is an amazing collection of
furniture and lamps. The owner is
the eccentric Arkadiusz Choduń,
who in 1991 went to a Rolling
Stones concert in Prague and
ended up staying in the Czech
capital for ten years. He became
enraptured with Czech design
from the 1930s. Today, he brings
modernist furniture from the
1930s to the 1960s to Warsaw (including Thonet pieces).
Mr. Choduń doesn’t sell furniture
that has already been restored,
as customers would then suspect that it may have only been
recently produced. He’d rather
restore it once you choose your
favourite piece.

64 Cities

01 Warszawa

Ania Kuczyńska

One of the most recognisable names in fashion
– here and abroad. Graduate of the prestigious
Accademia Koefia in Rome and Esmod in Paris

This great restaurant, whose cuisine successfully reconciles tradition with modernity, is located
in the former Europejski Hotel,
which in itself is an interesting
element of the history of Warsaw. Polish cuisine is served on
starched tablecloths in the beautiful hotel interior, while open
kitchen space allows guests to
see how dishes are made (some
of them are even prepared right
at the customers’ table). I recommend the steak tartar (tatar),
which is the house specialty.

The restaurant is hidden away
from view and not so easy to find.
It is located in the building of the
Centre for Contemporary Art
(CSW), so one can easily have
lunch, see an interesting exhibition and visit the well-stocked
bookshop – all in the course of an
afternoon. Dishes are served in
an original way on stylishly decorated tables. The summer terrace
offers a beautiful panoramic view
of Warsaw.

Pod Gigantami
Al. Ujazdowskie 24,
daily: 10 am – 11 pm
Nearby is the Pod Gigantami (Under the Giants) restaurant, located at Al. Ujazdowskie – one of the
most impressive streets in Warsaw – in a beautiful tenement
house, whose untypical entrance
is framed by two giants holding
up its balconies. The restaurant,
offering very light and tasty
cuisine, is housed in a huge old
apartment. It boasts an elegant,
refined décor filled with beautiful old furniture, in which tables
are set with beautiful pre-war
china and white-lace napkins, all
contributing to the restaurant’s
unique atmosphere.

Belvedere Restaurant >2
in the Royal Baths / Łazienki
Królewskie Park – ul. Agrykola 1,
daily : 12-11 pm
The restaurant’s décor and furniture were designed by a young
scenographer, Borys Kudliczka,
who has often collaborated with
Mariusz Treliński, art director of
the Polish National Theatre and
Opera in Warsaw. Belvedere is
located in a historic building of
interesting design. After lunch
I recommend a stroll through the
beautiful Royal Baths Park.

it offers with a superb restaurant
in the back. The meringue cake,
is an absolute must. The homemade doughnuts with rose-jam
filling should definitely be tried
as well.
Mielżyński Wine Bar
ul. Burakowska 5/7,
mon – thu: 9 am – 11 pm,
fri&sat: 11 am – 11 pm, 12.45–6 pm
Mielżyński’s décor is an example
of a very successful conversion of post-industrial space of
a former factory into a wine bar.
Mielżyński’s immediate vicinity is
that of an interesting commercial
complex, presenting the visitors
with an opportunity to do a little
shopping in Red Onion (great
olive oil!) or visit one of the most
famous hair stylists. It is best to
visit Mielżyński in summertime,
when one can sit outside and enjoy a glass of good wine.

Warsaw’s Old Town is in fact
very, very new. The houses
along the Castle Square (Plac
Zamkowy) were rebuilt in the
early fifties, the cathedral (in the

1

2

middle) in 1956, and the Royal
Castle itself was not finished
until 1988.

>2 Warsaw’s Museum of

Modern Art (MSN) has emerged
as one of the most interesting
institutions in Europe focused
on recent art.

66 Cities

02

Katowice & Silesia
2.8m

141 000

1026 €

1789 h

Katowice international Airport / 30 km

key to icons on page 52

At 111 metres, the
historic broadcasting
tower of the Gliwice
radio station is the
tallest structure in the
world built entirely out
of wood.

A decade ago the idea of spending a weekend
in Silesia, a region with two hundred years
of coal mining tradition under its belt, would
seem outrageous, but now the whole area
is re-inventing itself as a destination for the
demanding tourist: from contemporary art
and alternative music lovers to people who
get their kicks from playing golf on derelict
industrial sites
The train station in Katowice is one of the busiest in Poland. It sits right
in the heart of the city. The neighbourhood south of it is a testimony
to the inter-war period of prosperity when the city was the capital
of an autonomous region rich in coal and steel: Upper Silesia (Górny
Śląsk). The ambition and wealth of the ‘most American of Polish cities’ is reflected in the sheer size of the regional parliament building
(Sejm Śląski) and Poland’s then second-tallest apartment tower. These
achievements were to be dwarfed by the development undertaken
north of the train station in the 1960s and the 1970s. Along Aleja Korfantego is the longest housing block in the city (superjednostka) and
the masterfully engineered 11,500 seat arena, Spodek (the saucer). In
a couple of years a new cultural district will be completed next to it,
replacing the Katowice coal mine: with a concert hall of the Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra (NOSPR), a convention centre and
the partly underground premises of the Silesian Museum (Muzeum
Śląskie) designed by the Austrian architects Riegler & Riewe.
If you feel like connecting with the region’s working class tradition, take a bus to the suburb called Giszowiec, founded a century ago
by the Giesche brothers industrialists who used to own around one
third of the present city area. Giesche’s miners were housed in a selfsustained community of red-brick houses, with a school, a church and

67

The corn-shaped tower blocks
of TysiÄ&#x2026;clecia housing estate in
Katowice were designed in the
seventies to provide compact
apartments with maximum
daylight .

68 Cities

02 Katowice & Silesia

The ornate gate from the
Donnersmarck palace in
Świerklaniec near Katowice was
dismantled in 1960 and rebuilt
as the entrance to the zoo in the
Culture Park in Chorzów.

other local facilities. Get there before it’s registered on the UNESCO
heritage list and turns into a theme park.
On the other side of Katowice, in Chorzów, another version of
a working class paradise was created fifty years later at the order of
the much cherished local communist leader – General Ziętek. The
600 – hectare Park of Culture and Leisure is nearly twice as large a New
York’s Central Park and was probably the earliest attempt at land reclamation in this part of Europe. With its charmingly retro attractions
(a planetarium, a zoo, an open-air museum of vernacular architecture,
a fun park, outdoor swimming pools and the valley of dinosaurs) it can
be best admired from a cable car that hovers in the air.
Katowice may be the seat of local government, but the region is
in fact polycentric. The second biggest – Gliwice, is equally successful to Katowice in its transition from industrial to a service-based
economy. It is the seat of Silesia’s technical university which is the
reason why it boasts a vibrant architect community. Bytom has
unique cultural institutions: the region’s only opera house, a strong

69

Przemo Łukasik

Architect, lives and works in Bytom, in a house converted from
a concrete coal mine building, co-founder of the acclaimed
architectural practice Medusa Group
Bytom and Silesia are a hybrid
of culture and industry. In Bytom there is Centrum Sztuki
Współczesnej Kronika / the
Centre for Contemporary Art
Kronika, Śląski Teatr Tańca /
Silesian Dance Theatre, opera,
a ballet school and a music
school. Bytom also boasts one of
the most important collections
of Polish art after 1989 – the collection of Muzeum Śląskie / the
Silesian Museum.
Alternativ turistic
Alternativ turistic project maps
are available at the Kronika Gallery. You can use them to explore
individually or join a group and
travel around Śląsk in a more
organised, yet still very alternative way.
More than a dozen bicycles are
available for trips during which
tourists can venture out to the
venues to date accessible only to
miners, steelworkers and factory
workers; venues unfamiliar event
to most inhabitants of Silesia.
With Alternativ Turistic you
can also see the remnants of
the Szobierki mine as well as
Huta Katowice / Katowice
Steelworks – once the boldest
industrial achievement of socialist Poland. In Zabrze, the project
Kopalnia Guido / Guido Mine
offers the possibility of going
down into the mine (with a ticket). Other attractions include
turbo golf tournaments >1 on
the slagheaps or in the halls of
closed-down factories
Kronika Centrum Sztuki
Współczesnej / Centre for Contemporary Art Kronika,
Rynek 26, Bytom,
tue – thu: 11 am – 6 pm, fri: 2
pm – 8 pm, sat: 11 am – 3 pm,

Rondo Sztuki is a contemporary
art gallery located in a glazed
pavilion over Katowiceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s biggest
roundabout â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Rondo ZiÄ&#x2122;tka, next
to the memorial of the heroes of
the Silesian Uprising .

contemporary art collection and the most influential art gallery in
this part of the country.
Until 1914 the industrial region was split between three empires:
the Russian, Austrian and German. When Poland re-gained independence in 1918, Upper Silesia was divided again between Poland and
Germany (the Weimar republic). In 1945 the whole urban region was
for the first time brought together under Polish rule. The old divisions are still relevant to locals nonetheless, but for the untrained
eye it is often difficult to tell where one city ends and the next one
begins and the historical and cultural divisions are diminishing. It is
perfectly likely for a student of the Silesian University in Katowice

71

South of the train station is
Katowice’s modernist centre,
planned and built in the thirties,
when the city became the capital
of the autonomous region of
Silesia.

to get some culture and beer in Bytom in the evening, sleep over
at a handsome stranger’s place in Gliwice and still make it back to
school by train the next morning. Hundreds of thousands commute
between the 14 cities and it is technically possible to travel from
Gliwice in the west to Dąbrowa Górnicza in the east on a tram. The
length of this journey, compared to the 20-minute ride down the A4
motorway shows just how much the region could benefit from a bit
of coordination. Common sense prevailed in 2007 when the 14 cities
of the region formed the Metropolitan Association of Upper Silesia
(Górnośląski Związek Metropolitalny) – the first step towards creating a super-city of 3 million inhabitants.

72 Cities

02 Katowice & Silesia

Roman Łój

President of the board of the Katowice
Coal Holding company responsible for
18% of Poland’s coal production
In Zabrze, it’s worth going down
the historic mine Guido (ZKWK
Guido ul. 3 Maja 93, Zabrze,
tue – sun. Hours of underground
sightseeing tue: 9:00 - 18:00,
wed – fri: 9am – 2.30 pm, sat – sun:
12 am – 4 pm, www.kopalniaguido.
pl). In Tarnowskie Góry – Historic Silver Mine (ul. Szczęść Boże
52, Tarnowskie Góry, mon – sun,
9 am – 3 pm, www.kopalniasrebra.
pl) is much older and was exhausted long ago, available for
tourist groups. An amazing show
used to be held there – the lights
were turned off, with only several point lamps left in the main
pit, shining like miners’ oil lamps.
This was intended to teach respect for the people who used
to work underground. Fans of
architecture should definitely
pay a visit to the Nikiszowiec
neighbourhood >1 (a district
of Katowice, www.nikiszowiec.
pl), almost a separate town built
100 years ago for the workers
of the present-day Wieczorek
mine. Apart from this, take
a look at the architecture in the
centre of Mikołów, the palace at
Pszczyna – Castle Museum in
Pszczyna, (ul. Brama Wybrańców
1, Pszczyna, tue – sun: 10 am – 3
pm, www.zamek-pszczyna.pl),
the brewery museum in Tychy (Tyskie Browarium, (ul.
Mikołowska 5, entrance from ul.
Katowicka), Tychy, mon – sat,
10 am – 8 pm, www.tyskiebrowarium.pl).

1

Przemysłowa 2, Katowice), or
next to the Wieczorek mine at
the restaurant of the division
of the Association of Mining
Engineers and Technicians. The
last of these venues is easy to
overlook, but this might be the
reason why it has preserved its
traditional atmosphere. Just like
the old-fashioned Karczma Pod
Młynem, renowned for its cuisine and hidden among furniture
stores. (ul. Dytrycha 3a)

Restaurants
An exclusive restaurant at the
Hotel Monopol >2 at ul. Dworcowa 5, It is definitely worth a visit hotel and restaurant Marysin
Dwór (ul. Pukowca 17a, Katowice,
www.restauracja-katowice.com.
pl). And traditional gatherings at
the restaurant Pod Kasztanami
in Giszowiec (ul. Radosna 35,
Katowice-Giszowiec), closer to
the city centre at Gwarek (ul.

Both the fine arts and applied
design have had a very positive
impact on the character of Silesia.
And this should be understood
not only as product design, but
also engaged design, or critical
design. These trends are very
interestingly articulated in initiatives carried out by the Katowice
Academy for Fine Arts and in the
Castle of Art and Entrepreneurism in Cieszyn >1 (ul. Zamkowa 3),
a unique institution in Poland.

Lech Wałęsa is the city’s
most famous citizen.
Having retired from
politics he has become
a living icon, symbolised
by Gdańsk artist’s
Grzegorz Klaman’s
sculpture above.

A series of beautiful coincidences created
Tricity (Trójmiasto): an urban phenomenon
made up of three cities. In fact it is a mosaic
of smaller neighbourhoods, which becomes
evident when one takes the SKM train
connecting the metropolitan area along the
Baltic coast
Hopping on and off the train one can witness so many lifestyles and
different eras it seems almost impossible for them to exist shoulder to shoulder. First there is the Old Town in Gdańsk – a monument to the power of the local bourgeoisie who used to control
all the trade between Poland and the rest of the world through the
port. Meticulously restored after the Second World War, it is worth
a long walk, although it feels a bit detached from the modern life of
the city. Then there’s the legendary Gdańsk Shipyard where unrest
started in 1970 and 1980, consequently leading to the fall of communism in this part of Europe. Further along the coast there are the
gigantic concrete housing estates in Przymorze and Zaspa built in
the seventies on the site of a former airfield. With huge open spaces
left between the blocks, the strict separation of pedestrian and vehicular traffic and trams zooming in and out of tunnels, the neighbourhood even after four decades retains a slightly unreal, utopian
feel. Worth seeing are the enormous murals created by local and
international artists, churches from the Polish ecclesiastical construction boom of the ­seventies and eighties, and the longest building in Poland (860 m) – the Wave Block (Falowiec) taking its name
from the winding footprint. In what seems like a parallel universe
where time stopped a hundred years ago, there is the neighbourhood of Oliwa, which boasts a cathedral, a meticulously preserved
historical park and streets lined with old trees and villas, with cosy
cafes and antique shops.

75

The shore of Gdańsk Bay (Zatoka
Gdańska) is punctuated by piers
in all three cities: Gdańsk (on the
Brzeźno beach), Sopot (top) and
Gdynia (bottom).

76 Cities

03 Tricity — Gdansk / Gdynia / Sopot

Sopot’s main pedestrian
promenade – Bohaterów Monte
Cassino, affectionately called
Monciak, is teeming with people
throughout the summer season.

Sopot is Oliwa’s younger, wilder brother. The most famous resort on the Polish coast is the Tricity’s playground, where people
from the whole area come to dine and party. It can become quite unbearable in July and August when the usual traffic is quadrupled by
holiday makers, but take a walk a few blocks away from the main
promenade (Bohaterów Monte Cassino or monciak), or come on
a warm spring or autumn weekend and you will get a perfect blend
of hedonism and class. Sopot is a firm favourite with expats who decide to settle in the Tricity, so don’t be surprised if you’re greeted by
a handsome stranger in your native tongue.
Further north, Sopot (the smallest of the three cities) seamlessly blends into Orłowo – a neighbourhood of Gdynia. Gdynia is
a city ’created out of sea and dreams‘, a Dubai-style story that happened in the’ 20s and the’ 30s when Poland suffered from a trade war
with Germany and decided it needed to grow independent from the
German-controlled harbour in Gdańsk. A new city and a port were
built in a space of a dozen years on the site of a fishermen’s village,

77

Leszek Możdżer

Composer, pianist, jazz musician, music producer, recently artistic
director of the legendary SFINKS 700 club in Sopot, suggests
a 7-day programme to give you insight into the city’s scene
lation, progressions and harmonic substitutes, pleasing the more
demanding jazz enthusiasts during the weekly jam sessions.
Friday and Saturday

1

Monday
Say hello to the sea. Listen to the
only genuine music of Sopot –
the sound of the Bay of Gdańsk.
With its uninterrupted rhythm,
the sea will envelop you with its
wonderfully soothing whisper,
asking you a few important questions.
Tuesday
After a good rest, we begin our
tour at 8.00 pm. To start, allow
yourselves to be carried away by
Jazz Travel – a cycle of tue gigs in
the club Versalka > 1 (ul. Bohaterów Monte Cassino 63). The cosy
stage of that club has witnessed
the best Polish jazz musicians of
the young, mid and older generations. Versalka is the perfect place
to gather momentum for the rest
of the week.
Wednesday
Papryka (ul. Grunwaldzka 11, Live
Wednesdays, 9 pm). A place for
those in the know, the Mecca of
Tricity’s alternative scene. Access to those over 21 years old;
ring the bell on the left-hand side.

Once inside, you will find yourself
in the midst of loud, energetic
guitar music. The joyous and
spontaneous jamming sessions
bring together the rock and punk
scene of Tricity. Jazz musicians
and DJs also pop in, sometimes
the stage will feature dozens of
musicians on a single evening; no
one here is surprised by the roar
of guitars at 3 o’clock in the morning. But midnight is usually the
hottest hour.
Thursday
After a heavy dose of decibels
it’s time for a change. Thursday music evenings at 6 pm in
Dworek Sierakowski (ul. Józefa
Czyżewskiego 12) will restore the
right sensitivity to your hearing.
Here, every thu you can listen to
the most talented and active musicians in Tricity.
Once you have fed your soul with
a portion of delicate and sophisticated classical music, I suggest
that you try something harder
and take a walk to Stary Rower
(ul. Pułaskiego 15). Here, the premier jazz league of Tricity and its
surrounding areas swings its way
through the jungle of jazz modu-

You don’t need a special plan to
get to know the DJ scene – all
you need to do is walk from club
to club. Mandarynka (ul. Bema
6), Stary Rower, Spatif, Soho
(ul. Bohaterów Monte Cassino
61), Coco Bongo (ul. Bohaterów
Monte Cassino 55/57), Ferber (ul.
Bohaterów Monte Cassino 48), Ego
(BohaterówMonte Cassino 53).
Luckily, you can get everywhere
on foot, as the clubs are only
a few paces from one another
and you won’t need the car at all,
unless you want to go to Pestka
(ul. Sportowa 1).
Sunday
Visit Sauna World in Sopot’s
Aqua Park (ul. Zamkowa Góra 3),
for after such an intensive week,
your body will need some rest
and cleansing.
In the evening, the ritual of saying
farewell to the sea, the sound of
which will soothe your senses,
the obligatory borsch and pierogi
in Spatif >2 (Bohaterów Monte
Cassino 52). On a Sunday evening
you should be able to easily find
a table.
The Sopot sound treatment is
over; now you can go back to
your daily business, enriched by
unforgettable musical sensations.

2

78 Cities

03 Tricity — Gdansk / Gdynia / Sopot

Wojciech Szczurek

Probably the most popular of big city mayors in
Poland. In 2010 he was elected for a fourth term
by 87,4 % of Gdynia’s electorate
en pier in Europe and the Forest
Opera, which is a concert venue
for summer music festivals.
G dy n i a

1

According to a local saying,
Gdańsk is for sightseeing, Sopot
for relaxing and Gdynia for doing
business. Recently, however, this
view is becoming more and more
anachronistic, as each of the three
cities can well serve any of these
purposes, albeit each in a different
style. The close distance between
Gdańsk, Sopot and Gdynia is
shortened even more by the comfortable Rapid Urban Railway
/ Szybka Kolej Miejska – SKM,
a network of roads and a ring road
( Obwodnica).
G da ń s k
Gdańsk attracts visitors with its
historic buildings and the charm
of a Hanseatic port city. It is the
Polish Amsterdam. Długa and
Długi Targ streets, the City Hall
(ul. Długa 46, tue: 10 am – 3 pm,
no entry fee, entry every 30 minutes, wed – sat: 10 am – 4 pm, sun:
11 am – 4 pm), the Artus Court >1
( tue: 10 am – 3 pm, no entry fee,
entry every 30 minutes, wed – sat:
10 am – 4 pm, sun: 11 am – 4 pm),
fountain of Neptune, and a medieval crane (ul. Szeroka 67/68,
mon – sun: 10:30 am – 6:30 pm)
by the Motława river – all these

are iconic landmarks. The city also
serves a wartime memento, with
remains of the heroic resistance
against the Nazi aggressor from
September 1939 at Westerplatte,
where World War II started, still
visible. The gates to Gdańsk shipyard, the monument at Solidarity
Square and Lech Wałęsa himself
– these are all symbols of anticommunist resistance.
S o p ot
Sopot is the most famous of Polish
seaside resorts, with Art Nouveau
architecture and a recently built
hotel and convention complex.
However, Sopot’s main allure is
still its beaches, the longest wood-

2

Finally, Gdynia, a phenomenon of
a city that developed at lightning
speed in early 1920s as a result of
the decision to construct a giant
harbour on the site of a Kashubian
fishermen’s village. Nowadays,
Gdynia is not only a port harbouring the world’s largest container
and cruiser ships, a site for shipyards and maritime business, but
also a vibrant city of a quarter of
a million inhabitants that entices
visitors with a plethora of tourist
attractions, including the Gdynia
Aquarium (al. Jana Pawła II 1,
daily: 8 am – 3 pm), two swimming museums: Dar Pomorza
frigate and WWII-era destroyer
ORP Błyskawica as well as
a uniform modernist architectural complex that is unique on
the European scale. The city has
become famous for its major
artistic events, among them the
Heineken Open’er Festival, recognised as the best music festival
in Europe, the annual Polish Film
Festival, Ladies’ Jazz Festival
and Globaltica World Culture
Festival. Additionally, Gdynia
specialises in sailing events such
as regattas and boat shows featuring the world’s largest yachts
>2, which explains its title as the
Sailing Capital of Poland.

79

Gdynia is dotted with art déco
and modernist houses dating
back to the roaring twenties and
thirties when the modern city
was founded. The tenants of
the magnificent building on the

corner in 10 Lutego Street have
even started a private museum
devoted to Gdynia’s design
heritage.

quickly drawing a 100,000 ambitious people from all over the country. Now Gdynia is still a vibrant port city, with quarters of modernist, art déco-flavoured architecture (the best examples can be
found along ulica Świętojańska and 10 Lutego), surrounded by leafy
residential quarters on green hills. Climb one of them – Kamienna
Góra – to take in a view of the city, the harbor and the shipyard,
recently shadowed by Sea Towers – a brand new 140 metre-tall residential building .

80 Cities

03 Tricity — Gdansk / Gdynia / Sopot

The Gdańsk Shipyard area,
where anti-communist riots
and strikes broke out in 1970
and 1980, is being redeve­
loped, but the traces
of history are still there.

Lech Wałęsa

Leader of the Solidarność
movement in the 1980s,
winner of the Nobel Peace
Prize, President of the
Republic of Poland 1990-95

When I was a little boy,
I saw Gdańsk as a big
city with a seaport and
shipyards. I knew that the
Second World War had
started there. I also heard
that there were many
historical sights in Gdańsk.
This is how much I knew
then.
In the late spring of 1967
I got on a train and went
to the seaside. I got off the
train at the Gdańsk Główny
railway station. A minute
later I bumped into a friend
from my old neighbourhood
who talked me into working
in the shipyard. I met my
wife Danuta in Gdańsk and
this is where our children
were born…So that is how

I became a Gdańsk man out
of my own choice.
Today, many years later,
having visited so many cities
in Europe and the world, I can
say that I would never swap
Gdańsk for New York, Paris,
Brussels, Tokyo or Moscow…
At the end of the 20th
century, Poland gave Pope
John Paul II to Europe and
the world. Gdańsk, on
the other hand, gave the
Solidarność movement
to its nation, as well as
to Europe and the entire
world (…).
excerpt from: Gdańsk Lecha
Wałęsy / Lech Wałęsa’s Gdańsk,
Piotr Adamowicz, Andrzej
Drzycimski, Adam Kinaszewski,
Gdańsk 2008.

81

Aneta Szyłak

Director of the Wyspa Institute of Art on the premises of
the legendary Gdańsk Shipyard takes a break to give us
an exclusive tour of the Tricity area
Gdańsk Shipyard
This is the most interesting
place in the Tricity for me. It was
here that I decided to set up the
Wyspa Institute of Art / Instytut
Sztuki Wyspa. Above all I was
struck by the complexity of the
place. Because of this the Shipyard is now generally considered
an industrial rather than a postindustrial place. It is not a monument, but a living place. It is still
an operating workplace and only
a certain part of its premises has
been liquidated, destined to be
transformed into a new district,
the Young City. Our projects happen in the close collaboration
with the vital communities within
the shipyard and its surrounding.
The shipyard is also a laboratory
of the changes taking place in
Poland. Here you can learn about
the political struggle (including
the myths about the founder of
the Solidarność movement), the
establishment of the institutions
themselves, the cuts in the workforce, the division of the company,
the privatisation processes, the
culture of demonstration, free
time and zoning.

1

2

Subiektywna Linia Autobusowa
/ Subjective Bus Line >1
tickets available in an infobox by
the Shipyard gate
An initiative by Grzegorz Klaman,
giving voice back to the former
shipyard workers who debate
the history of the shipyard in an
old bus.
Buffet Klub >2 ul. Doki 1,
mon – sun: 12 pm – 11 pm
Frequented by artists, activists,
musicians, journalists, students,
curators and animators. This is
a venue for all those who want
to see the Gdańsk art scene in its
full glory, especially at weekends.
The café’s interior is a great com-

bination of industrial style, a few
contemporary additions and
artistic touches. The club serves
good drinks, offers music events,
as well as book promotions. The
Buffet staff are friendly, competent and charismatic.
Tawerna Dominikańska ul. Targ
Rybny 9, daily: 12 am – 12 pm
The restaurant is located in
Długie Pobrzeże opposite the
Baltic Philharmonic Hall. It does
not look too flashy, so it can be
easily overlooked. It offers the
best and freshest fish in town. A
few varieties of cod, eel and salmon, as well as excellent herring
in oil are served here. Make sure

you book your table in advance
for the weekend.
Mazel Tov
ul. Ogarna 119
This is the stronghold of the klezmer resistance against the anti
tobacco law. Smoking is allowed
here! It is a small and homely
place with an intimate family
atmosphere, so it is worth getting to know everyone around
– without delay. It boasts a large
group of regulars. Here you can
improvise music with friends and
unusual things can happen any
time. If you have a musical instrument, bring it along and join in
straight away.

82 Cities

04

Kraków
2.1m

185 000

815 €

1523 h

J ohn Paul II International Airport
Kraków-Balice / 11 km

key to icons on page 52

Kraków has enough historic sights to keep
you busy for a few days, but it does not
cease to surprise with more and more new
galleries, museums, bars, restaurants

The Virgin Mary church
is a source of inspiration
for the architecture of
the szopka – elaborate
folk nativity scenes
crafted by artists from
the region, exhibited
yearly in Kraków before
Christmas. A large
collection of them can
be seen at the Historical
Museum of Kraków.

Kraków, the ancient capital and former seat of kings, is the grande
dame of Polish cities, one of very few that have retained an old worldly atmosphere throughout the tumultuous 20th century. It is the
only Polish city that boasts a work by Leonardo – and an Old Town
filled with miraculously preserved gothic and baroque churches, it
has a 650-year old university, aristocratic families taking tea at the
same table their grandparents took tea at with their grandparents. It
is filled with Polish memorabilia. It is a city so Polish that it can make
a modern Pole feel like a foreign tourist.
The main market square (Rynek Główny) is the city’s treasure
trove, with the Virgin Mary Church (Kościoł Mariacki, famous for
Weit Stoss’s spectacular gothic altar piece) and the Clothier’s Hall
(Sukiennice) that houses the National Museum’s Polish painting
collection. Further south, down ulica Grodzka there is Wawel hill
with the former Royal Castle and the cathedral that is less a part of
Kraków, and more Poland in a nut shell. Nearly a thousand years ago
it became the seat of Polish kings with a castle and a cathedral.
There are at least 300 restaurants and bars of different sorts in
the Old Town. But there is more waiting for you three tram stops
away in Kazimierz, the former Jewish neighbourhood. In the 1990s
Kazimierz underwent something of a renaissance. A plethora of new
bars and cafes, and of course Jewish-themed restaurants, changed
the grim streetscape. The apartments upstairs were snapped up
by trendy Cracovians, then by wealthy expats and Varsovians who
wanted a piece of the action for themselves. This drove away a lot of
the working class population that had settled here after the war, replacing the Jewish population. By the end of the 1990s, Kazimierz officially became the new Old Town, a mandatory stop for every tourist.

83

Kopiec Kościuszki (the
Kościuszko Mound) is an artificial
hill created to honour the
nation’s hero over a hundred
years ago. It alludes to pagan
tradition of burying great heroes

in tumuli. Two of them can be
found in Kraków, one devoted to
the legendary pagan prince Krak
and the other to his daughter
Wanda.

84 Cities

04 Kraków

The Nowa Huta neighbourhood
was built in the fifties east of
the old city together with new
gigantic steelworks. The factory’s
headquarters was built in a style

that is a hybrid of a Florentine
renaissance palazzo and local Old
Town architecture .

L

Life in the neighbourhood revolves around ulica Szeroka, with five
old synagogues and an old market square – Plac Nowy, which is also
one of the centres of nightlife in Kraków.
Kazimierz can no longer claim to be the coolest neighbourhood.
Podgórze – an area across the river linked with the city proper via
a spectacular new footbridge – is stealing the crown. It was immortalised by Steven Spielberg in Schindler’s List, but it was Kazimierz that
benefited most from the burst of interest in Jewish culture. Typically, Podgórze’s renaissance started with an invasion of students looking for cheap accomodation, followed by bars and cafes that quickly
became local institutions. Unlike in the largely gentrified Kazimierz
they still rub shoulders with butcher’s shops and funeral homes.
Until recently, there was only one major cultural institution in the
neighbourhood. The Manggha Centre for Japanese Art and Technology, designed by Arata Isozaki, is home for a unique collection of
Japanese art, given a wider audience thanks to the director Andrzej
Wajda’s and his wife Krystyna Zachwatowicz’s determination and

85

Tomasz Gutkowski

Director of the Foundation for Visual Arts
and the Photomonth festival in Kraków
recommends a 24-hour itinerary
Kraków offers many fun-filled
days for those in search of cultural and culinary attractions. But
if you only have 24 hours I recommend the following itinerary
(in no particular order). To keep
things simple, we can start at
Bunkier Sztuki, (Plac Szczepański
3a, tue – sun: 11 am – 6 pm). This
contemporary urban gallery
buzzes with alternative art life
on two floors of space, including
a wonderfully stocked bookstore
and a vast cafe. Leaving Art
Bunker, we head down ul. św. Tomasza to Galeria Camelot (ul. Św.
Tomasza 17) and its renowned
cafe, an ideal spot for early lunch.
Walk down the street a dozen or
so metres and hang a left onto
ul. Floriańska in the direction
of Pauza – a conglomeration
of a movie theatre, club, cafe,
and gallery. Staying on ul. św.
Tomasza, we come upon Galeria
ZPAF I S-ka >1 (ul. Św. Tomasza
24, wed, fri, sat: 12 – 6 pm, thu:
3 pm – 9 pm), a small but spunky
gallery of contemporary photography and across the way is the
House of Albums (ul. Św. Tomasza
25, mon – fri: 10 am – 7 pm, sat:
11 am – 7 pm), a fantastic bookstore specialising in art books
and illustrated albums.
We can walk, take a streetcar,
or jump into a taxi to Kazimierz,
the former Jewish quarter and
currently the centre of Kraków
nightlife. For coffee choose
from one of the many cafes on
Plac Nowy (Alchemia, Miejsce,
Barak, Kolory, Singer, etc). If it’s
time for lunch, go Italian, for example the Sicilian cuisine at Coca.
Moving right along through Plac
Wolnica, pop into the Ethnographic Museum (Plac Wolnica
1, tues – sat: 11 am – 7 pm, sun:
11 am – 3 pm).
Later cross the Wisła river via
the newly-built Bernatka footbridge and this puts us right in
the heart of Podgórze, the free
city of yore and now an increas-

1

2

ingly fashionable district. Explore
the neighbourhood, including:
Galeria Starmach, known for its
exhibitions of leading contemporary artists (ul. Węgierska 5), Goldex Poldex (ul. Józefińska 21/12)
– the fanciful centre of independent culture, and the new home
of Cricoteka, Tadeusz Kantor’s
experimental theatre (museum
to be opening in late 2011).
After a short walk along the
Wisła we come to one of the
most dynamically growing parts
of town. Once an unattractive
industrial district, now home to
two flagship cultural projects: the
MOCAK (Museum of Modern
Art Kraków), housed in a breathtaking new building and the

nearby Oscar Schindler Factory
Museum (Lipowa 4, tue – sun:
10 am – 6 pm), whose permanent exhibition shows the life of
Kraków’s Jewish community during the Second World War.
The day can be wrapped up
by visiting Fabryka, a colony
of artists workshops, galleries,
and bookstores, formed around
a huge music club. More likely
than not, a concert or some other
show will be on. If you still have
the fortitude for more nightlife,
head back to the City Centre for
a taste of Kraków’s legendary
clubs: Bomba>2, Pauza, Piękny
Pies, Rozrywki 3 and many… too
many… more.

86 Cities

04 Krak贸w

87

The Wawel Hill, with the
cathedral and a former
royal castle, reads like
a history book: coronations,
assasinations, royal
weddings and burials.

88 Cities

04 Kraków

The seminary of the Resurrectionist Order was built in the
nineties and remains one of the
most fascinating examples of
Post-Modern architecture in
Poland.

financial support. In 2011 MOCAK (The Museum of Contemporary
Art Kraków) opened next door to the former Schindler factory and
a museum dedicated to the avant garde theatre director Tadeusz
Kantor is under construction on the river front.
Those interested in the city’s Jewish heritage should visit the memorial on Plac Bohaterów Getta – the square where Jews from Kazimierz were congregated before being sent to concentration camps.
Kraków is a departure point for most of the tourists who want to
visit the most (in)famous of them: Auschwitz-Birkenau, located in
Oświęcim, about an hour’s drive west of the city.
If you feel like venturing out of the comfort zone of the historical part of town, you can either head up the river to the Benedictine
abbey in Tyniec, spectacularly perched on top of a rock, or hop on
a tram to Nowa Huta. On the waiting list for UNESCO’s world heritage list, Nowa Huta is a bizarre social engineering experiment conceived in the early years of communist Poland – a new working class
town with a gigantic steel factory that was to overshadow old Kraków
with its burgeois ways, slender church spires and royal memorabilia.
What was meant to be an independent city is now a troubled district
of Kraków, that fascinates with its grandiose Stalinist architecture.
Get there before it turns into the next Old Town.

89

Cecylia Malik

Artist who became popular thanks to her project
365 Trees. Inspired by Italo Calvino’s Baron in the
Trees, she climbed one tree every day for one year.
Lives in Kraków
Salwator
This walk starts at the Dębnicki
Bridge near Wawel Castle.
Across from the Jubilat >1 department store is Flisak Milk
Bar where you can eat a proper
full Polish lunch, including herring, chased down with a shot of
vodka. After about five minutes
of walking along the Wisła, we
see the walls of the Convent of
the Norbertine Sisters. Here
we walk up onto ul. Tadeusza
Kościuszki and continue in the
direction of the final stop of the
streetcar in Salwator. We pass
a baroque abbey to our left and
turn into ul. św. Bronisławy. This
is a beautiful boulevard lined
on both sides with maples, ash,
linden and chestnut trees. This
takes us past the Romanesque-baroque Church of St. Salvador,
the oldest church in Kraków,
dating back to the 10th century.
Across the street is St. Margaret’s, a round wooden structure.
We pass the 100 – year old
mansions of old Kraków families,
a cemetery on our left and then
we’re nearly at Kościuszko’s
Mound. This is one of four such
sites in Kraków built to commemorate Poland’s national heroes.
Tadeusz Kościuszko, originally
a Polish military engineer, served
as a general in the Polish and
American armies, including fighting in the American Revolution.
The effort to build the mound
was commenced in 1820, three
years after Kosciuszko’s death,
and it took another three years to
complete. We have a choice – the
view from up top is spectacular,
but we can also pass on from this
and follow the path westward.
Immediately on the other side
of the mound is a sycamore-ash
forest, and we are headed in the
direction of the so-called Sikornik, a hill overgrown with birch
trees. To our left we can see the
Wisła valley, the abbey in Tyniec,

1

2

and the gentile outline of the Beskidy mountains. Even further, on
a clear day, one can also see the
rugged snow-capped panorama
of the Tatras.
From Sikornik, we walk down
through a pass, and we are in the
middle of a real forest, beautiful
beech woods that fill with thimbleweed in the spring. From here,
we walk uphill for 15 minutes.
Up top is the city zoo, and 134
bus that takes us back to the city
centre.
Another interesting place is
the workshop of sculptor Andrzej Siek (ul. Emaus 20). It’s easy
enough to find as the entranceway is marked by massive wood
sculptures. Andrzej Siek treats
his work space as a gallery and
exhibition space. A visit is highly
recommended.
Yet another fantastic place
is the historical museum at
Zwierzy­niecki House (ul. Królowej
Jadwigi 41). During communist

times this house served as the
Lenin Museum in Kraków, as legend holds that before he led the
revolution in the Soviet Union he
spent a couple of days here.
Zakrzówek >2
Zakrzówek is a lake among the
Twardowski cliffs, not far from
the Wisła, on the edge of the
Kraków district of Dębniki. We
are nearly in the city centre, only
20 minutes away from Wawel
Castle. For quite some time this
has been a great place for alpine
climbing, nestled among the
woods, meadows and natural
rock formations. Twenty years
ago this was the site of a quarry,
which filled to become a lake and
is now heaven for scuba divers.
This site is currently being fought
over by developers and environmentalists who are trying to preserve a habitat of the extremely
rare Chequered Blue Butterfly.

90 Cities

Move over, Leonardo!
Kraków is adding more attractions
to its already wide range of museums. In 2010 and 2011 three new
venues opened: an underground
exhibition devoted to the city’s

1

04 Kraków

history underneath the Market
Square >1 , the Museum of Polish Aviation (Muzeum Lotnictwa
Polskiego) in a spectacular building
designed by the Berlin practice
Pysall.Ruge and the Kraków archi-

tect Bartłomiej Kisielewski in an
old airfield east of the city centre,
and the sleek new Museum of
Modern Art Kraków (MOCAK
>2 ) designed by the Italian Claudio Nardi.

91

2

92 Cities

04 Krak贸w

93

Driving by Kraków’s history
and its protagonists: from
construction workers of Nowa
Huta, to pope John Paul II, to
the Nobel Prize winning poet
Czesław Miłosz.

94 Cities

05

Łódź
1.1m

123.000

750 €

1820 h

Łódź Władysław Reymont Airport / 6 km

key to icons on page 52

Uszatek – a teddy
bear beloved by Polish
children was born at
the Se-Ma-For studios
in Łódź.
Uszatek is one of
Polish Television’s
biggest exports ever,
known in Finland as
Nalle Luppakorva, in
Slovenia as Medvedek
Uhec, in Catalonia as
L’osset Faluc, in Holland
as Teddy Hangoor,
Slovenia as Macko
Uško, in Hungary – as
Füles Mackó.

Łódź, pronounced ‘wooch’, as in ‘Would
you’, used to be the fastest growing city in
Poland. There is no equivalent for the word
‘boomtown’ in Polish, but if there ware, it
would be spelled Łódź. Over the course
of the nineteenth century a bucolic village
of 767 inhabitants (in 1806) turned into
a textile industry powerhouse of 340,000,
dubbed the ‘Manchester of Poland’
Cotton from plantations in Central Asia would arrive here and return east with affordable textiles for the hungry Russian market.
Around the same time when Charles Darwin completed his Origins
of the Species, his theory of survival of the fittest was already a reality in Łódź. The experiment resulted in thousands of cash-hungry
Poles, Jews, Russians and Germans flocking here to play out their
rags-to-riches scenario. Most of them ended up on the bottom of
the food chain, but some were able to amass fortunes overnight.
The layout of the new city, located south of the old village along
the high street – Piotrkowska – resembled American cities with its
seemingly endless grid-like plans. The frenetic atmosphere of finde-siecle Łódź also resembled gold rush America. Perhaps this is
why Andrzej Wajda’s film The Promised Land, depicting the rise of
a Łódź industrialist, was so well received in America and garnered
an Oscar nomination in 1976.
When Wajda, a graduate of Łódź’s famous film school (along with
the likes of Polanski and Kieślowski) set out to shoot The Promised
Land, he did not have to spend much on sets. The locations – from
factories to restaurants, from industrialists’ mansions to slums
– were still there, intact, perhaps a little worn. In the seventies the
city centre was still sandwiched between two huge, redbrick textile

95

Piotrkowska Street– the main
axis of the city is the longest high
street in Poland, lined with shops,
cafes, galleries and clubs.

factories, formerly owned by two rival families that virtually ran the
city at the turn of the century. The Poznański of Jewish origin, had
the one in the north, and the German Scheibler family owned the
other one. Both of them are a different sight now.
The switch from socialism to capitalism hit Łódź hard. The industry that had first breathed life into Łódź, all but diappeared after 1989. As a result, the population shrank by some 100,000 over the
course of one decade. The recovery has been long but the patient is
getting better and better with each year. The unemployment rate
dropped from 20 to around 6 percent from 2004 to 2008, and the city
will soon officially become one of the most important transit hubs in

96 Cities

05 Łódź

Karol Scheibler’s White Factory
is one of the landmarks of Łódź’s
industrial architecture.

this part of the continent – the A2, connecting Warsaw with western
Europe, and the A1, linking the Baltic seaports with the south.
Piotrkowska Street is still the city’s spine, dotted with cafes, restaurants, clubs, cinemas and galleries. On the northern end, the Poznański
textile factory is now a fun factory, a telling sign of a transition from an
industrial to a service based economy. Alongside a huge shopping centre, there is a luxury hotel with a swimming pool suspended above the
city, a cinema, dozens of restaurants, and ms2 – the new space of Łódź’s
renowned Art Museum (Muzeum Sztuki). Somewhat dwarfed by all of
this is Poznański’s mansion, which is now a museum and is well worth
a visit as a fascinating testament of the local industrialist’s opulent, nouveau riche tastes. On the southern side of the centre, the Scheibler factory along with a cluster of other industrial buildings and working class
settlements is a picturesque blend of the old, the new, the renovated
and the forgotten. The main part of the Scheibler factory has been converted into loft apartments, while another factory further down Tymienieckiego street is home to Łódź Art Centre, an independent institution
responsible for some interesting festivals, amongst them Łódź Design,
which has quickly become the most respected design event in the country. Culture is one of the city’s main driving forces, as evidenced by the
recent success of Łódź’s animation studios, the renaissance of Muzeum
Sztuki or the burst of activity of local NGOs, thriving on the abundance
of empty post-industrial spaces.

97

Jarosław Suchan

Director of the Museum of Art in Łódź

Łódź is an unusual patchwork
comprising completely disparate elements – and that’s what
makes it so unique. The city is
atypical, turn almost any corner
and there will be a surprise in
store – whether for your eyes or
senses. In my opinion, the greatest attraction of Łódź is the very
fact that it shatters our expectations and imagination adopted on
earlier trips to other, seemingly
similar, cities.
Let us go on an imaginary
walk. First, see Księży Młyn >1
(from the Łódź Fabryczna railway
station towards Plac Zwycięstwa)
and the remnants of one of
the world’s largest nineteenth
century industrial complexes. In
fact, it’s a city within a city – with
factories, palaces, workers’
houses, parks, schools, hospitals
and even a fire station. Most of
the buildings were in ruins; the
original architectural design was
somehow distorted by the later,
not so successful architectural
execution. Nevertheless, the atmosphere is unusual – impressive
factory halls (some of which were
recently converted into fashionable lofts), Grohman’s villa, with
the interior possibly designed by
Otto Wagner himself, a fantastic
secessionist electric power station building etc. When you wander around the district you can’t
help feeling that you are discovering a kind of forgotten world
and it doesn’t matter if thousands
of globetrotters have discovered
it before us.
After Księży Młyn, I would
recommend moving on to Ruda
Pabianicka, the wooded hills
in the southern part of the city
stretching across to the Ner
river, with its picturesque little
lakes. Walking along the leafy alleys you can unexpectedly come
across the dilapidated remnants
of fantastic villas from the turn
of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, a time when it was

the favourite spot for the Łódź
bourgeoisie. One wooden villa
that used to belong to a Jewish
industrialist, Szyja Światłowski,
is particularly impressive. The
American film director Robby
Henson chose it for the setting of
his horror film House.
The old cemetery is the next
must-see. Or in fact three
cemeteries located next to one
another: Catholic, Protestant
and Russian Orthodox. Their

neighbourhood is testimony
to the multicultural history of
the city. Amongst trees, bushes
and an unkempt lawn lie the
tombstones of eminent Łódź
industrialists. These structures,
the size and splendour of which
befit palaces and castles, tell us
a lot about the prosperity of the
Łódź of yesteryear: the Łódź
that has disappeared forever.
Of course, there is also
­Piotrkowska street – the city’s

1

main drag, the monumental
palaces of Izaak and Karol
Poznański >2, Łagiewnicki
Forest, the biggest urban forest in Europe, the modernist
Montwiłła-Mireckiego district,
the Jewish cemetery with the
tombstones of the greatest figures in the history of Łódź. On
top of all that, the courtyards,
deserted little factories, forgotten villas and palaces, parks and
squares; an unbelievable maze
which is best explored without
recourse to guidebooks so that
you allow yourself to be surprised.

2

98 Cities

05 Łódź

The old Poznański factory,
immortalised by the director
Andrzej Wajda in his film
The ­Promised Land, has been
converted into a luxury hotel.

99

Pola Stępień

Interior architect and fashion designer,
founder of the wunderteam.pl group

Jazzga Club >1
ul. Piotrkowska 17, mon – sat:
12 pm – until last customer
In its ten-year history Jazzga
has staged the most intriguing of musical projects: from
extreme electro-acoustic experiments, through all kinds
of jazz improvisations, a mix
of electronic music, rock,
rhythm’n’blues, cabaret, punk
rock to disco and pop.
Naming just a few of such
projects makes one realise that
there is no sound that has not
been heard in that club: jazz
and post-rock improvisations
by the Exploding Star Orchestra, electronic and instrumental

2

gigs by the Burnt Friedman and
Jaki Liebezeit duo, ambient-dub
sets by Deadbeat, crazy sound
and vision experiments by Felix
Kubin or impromptu variations
by Macio Moretti (Maciej Moruś)
in his numerous incarnations:
Mitch&Mitch, Baaba or his
chilled, drum&basse 60 Minut
Projekt aka LXMP.
Owoce i Warzywa
ul. Traugutta 9, mon – sun:
10 am – until last customer
This is a relatively new place
that opened less than two years
ago. I like its unpretentious décor, interesting and frequent artistic happenings and good cof-

This is the second-oldest m
­ odern
art museum in the world. Its
unique collection was brought together in 1931 by artists from the
a.r. group. The Museum of Art in
Łódź continues the avant-garde
tradition: it presents art from the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is housed in a nineteenth
century townsman’s palace.
I also have a special connection with this place, since I have
had the pleasure of working,
together with Magdalena Kozia,
on the modernisation project of
the ground floor of the building
and its conversion into other
functional areas. Thanks to the
changes the museum has been
enhanced with a new, interesting
place: the ms café – appreciated
by design enthusiasts and guests.

100 Cities

06

Wrocław
1.07m

142 000

854 €

1891 h

Copernicus Airport Wrocław / 10 km

key to icons on page 52

Wrocław – a city located halfway between
Brussels and Kiev – has come a long way
from the ghost city it was in 1945 when
the Soviet troops marched in. Today it is
a vibrant economic and cultural hub that
has learnt to celebrate its complex history
The tower blocks in
Plac Grunwaldzki, with
funky oval-shaped
loggias, are an icon of
seventies space age
design.

One does not have to look at the map to realise that Wrocław is better connected to Dresden and Prague than to Warsaw. It becomes
clear once you find yourself at the Market Square (Rynek) – dominated by an elaborate Gothic city hall, filled with the buzz of terrace
cafes and the hum of a fountain. For better or worse, yes, you could
be in any city north of the Alps. Modern-day Wrocław combines metropolitan quality with the laid back atmosphere of smaller cities. It
benefits both from the presence of multinational companies such as
LG, Siemens, Volvo, Bosch, 3M, Toyota, and the 200,000 plus student
community that fills the northern part of the Old Town. Currently,
looking at the meticulously restored facades of the Old Town, the
brightly-lit Market Square and green boulevards along the Oder, it is
hard to believe that the city was ever disaster-stricken.
Yet, Wrocław, formerly Breslau, was taken over by Soviet and Polish armies in 1945, after a long and dramatic siege. Subsequently, the
whole German population was replaced with Polish settlers. This was
not the first such dramatic shift in the city’s history. Over the centuries it changed hands often. Polish, Czech, Habsburg, Prussian, German then Polish again – each political power leaving a distinct mark
on the city’s landscape. All of this, combined with traces left behind by
Wallon weavers, Jewish merchants and other minorities that chose to
call Wrocław home, adds to what the British historian Norman Davies
called the ‘microcosm’. In his book of this title (co-written with Roger
Moorhouse) he depicted Wrocław as a synecdoche of European history, a place swept by all the big cultural and political movements.

101

Park Szczytnicki, dominated by
the Centennial Hall â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a great
place to relax and reflect on the
cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s changing fortunes.

102 Cities

06 Wrocław

Make sure to take a lift to the
roof of the Renoma department
store and take in a 270 degree
panorama of Wrocław. On
a clear day you will see the
Sudety mountains in the south .

One can witness all of these layers during a single walk through
the city. The Market Square is a testament to medieval civic culture
and a product of modern-day leisure society. The churches with
slender spires that still dominate the skyline after all these centuries are monuments of gothic architecture. The multicultural
past can be traced in the South-Western part of the centre, called
the Four Temples Quarter, where an Orthodox, a Catholic and an
Evangelical-Augsburg church share the street with a recently restored synagogue. These temples rub shoulders with hot party
spots around the streets of Włodkowica, Ruska and Świętego Antoniego. If you look behind the facades you can see some unhealed
war wounds, which may trick you into thinking that the Reich surrendered only yesterday.
Wrocław has a love-hate relationship with the four rivers that
dissect the city – dozens of arms and canals. In 1997 the city suffered
from the ‘flood of the century’, which may be hard to imagine now,
when you see hundreds of people picnicking carefree on Wyspa
Słodowa (an island across from the main university building) on
a sunny summer day.
Taking a boat is one of the most memorable experiences one can
get in the city and yet another way to pass through its many architectural layers. Cruising upstream one passses by the Gothic churches of
the cathedral island (Ostrów Tumski), the modern university library,

103

Katarzyna Roj

Curator at the BWA Design gallery in Wrocław,
a place where design clashes with contemporary
art and science
Former Exhibition Site
I believe this is the most important place on the map. Here you
can find, among other things, Max
Berg’s Centennial Hall (ul. Wystawowa 1), listed by UNESCO.
The Hall is located across the
street from the ZOO ( depend
on the season; summer and public
holidays: 9 am – 7 pm – 25 PLN,
reduced 15 PLN), Park Szczytnicki and the Japanese Garden
( 1 Apr – 31 Oct: 9 am – 7 pm –
3 PLN, reduced – 1.5 PLN), the
former Feature Films Studio.
Other interesting sites are Pawilon Czterech Kopuł / the Four
Domes Pavilion >1, a pergola
and the horse-shoe shaped pond
with a recently completed multi­
media fountain ( am – 11 pm.
The first show begins at 10 am)

1

are situated in the vicinity of
Kopernika Street, at the back of
Szczytnicki Park.

WuWa
Murals
A walk around the legendary
construction exhibition WuWa
from 1929 is a must. For the exhibition, over 30 purely modernist residential buildings were
erected. You can see them from
the outside – because they are
still inhabited to this day. They

2

Murals from artists from all corners of the world are scattered
around the entire district. The
Wrocław urban art scene can be
admired in the passage between
Św. Antoniego and Ruska streets.
Here you can also find galleries,

The Oder’s dozens of arms
and canals make water sports
a natural pastime in Wrocław.
This spot is right next to the
National Museum.

the seventies tower blocks with extravagant oval windows and the
Nazi edifice of the regional authorities. The trip terminates by the zoo,
but if you don’t care too much for animals (or you care for them way
too much to watch them stuck behind bars) you can walk straight to
one of the city’s greatest marvels: the Centennial Hall (Hala Stulecia).
Completed in 1911, it is the only 20th century building in Poland to be
featured on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Its architect, Max Berg,
responsible for designing the enormous concrete dome, called it ‘the
cathedral of democracy’. But it is more than a textbook piece of architecture; it is also yet another powerful element of the microcosm
metaphor. Where else could you find a building that has hosted Hitler
and John Paul II, Picasso and the Dalai Lama?
For several years now, the local elite has been working to
eradicate any Polish-German resentments. This is symbolised by
the roaring success of crime stories about the detective Eberhardt
Mock, written recently by Marek Krajewski, set in pre-war and wartime Breslau. This peaceful reappropriation of previously rejected

105

The Market Square is one of
the biggest in the country and
still the actual centre of the
growing city.

German heritage has found its architectural equivalent in Renoma
â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the downtown department store, converted into a high end shopping centre. Originally opened in 1930 by a Jewish businessman,
Mr.Â Wertheim, as one of the biggest and most technically-advanced
stores in Europe, it was soon nationalised by the Nazis, then bombed,
then hastily rebuilt by the Polish authorities. After 1989 it suffered
from many unlucky goes at modernisation. It finally reopened in
2009 with the facades restored to their former glory (using four
kilograms of gold among other materials), a new, futuristic wing,
and a contemporary art collection inside. Not to mention dozens of
shops. Most of them â&#x20AC;&#x201C; again, could be anywhere in Europe. This is
probably a huge achievement in a city with such a dramatic history.

106 Cities

Wrocław is a paradise for 20th
century architecture lovers,
with buildings from some of
the most innovative Polish and

06 Wrocław

German architects, such as Erich
Mendelsohn’s former Petersdorff
department store from 1929.

2

107

Katarzyna Wielga

Co-ordinator of the Cultural Programme of the
Polish EU Presidency at the National Audiovisual
Institute (NInA)

1

3

The Centennial Hall (ul. Wystawowa 1) will host the European
Culture Congress (September
8-11, 2011), an unprecedented
meeting between culture theorists, practitioners and representatives of cultural NGOs.
The road leading to the Hall
from the center goes over two
bridges, including the Grunwaldzki Bridge , which was
designed 1919.
An absolute must is a visit
to Panorama Racławicka >3
(ul. Jana Ewangelisty Purkyniego
11), which is a very peculiar work
of art that says a lot about Poland, the Polish people and their
perspective on history.

1

2

Above all, Wrocław is associated
with its market square, filled
with many nice cafes, pubs and
restaurants. Spiż (Rynek-Ratusz 2)
is one of such places, offering not
only grub, but also beer from its
own brewery.
A few hundred feet farther
is the Solny square, home to
Soul Café (Plac Solny 4) – an
ideal breakfast cafe. An original
restaurant-cum-club is Mleczarnia >1 (ul. Włodkowica 5),

located right next door to the
newly renovated Pod Białym
Bocianem / Under the White
Stork Synagogue (ul. Włodkowica
7), which functions both as a temple and a culture centre. The
whole area around Włodkowica
street is brimming with cafes.
Lovers of Polish cuisine should
definitely visit Jadka restaurant
(ul. Rzeźnicza 24), which offers
such delicacies as pierogi filled
with veal or crayfish.

PURO Hotel Wrocław
ul. Włodkowica 6
It is located in the heart of the
city, a stone’s throw from the
Market Square and the train
station. The hotel offers luxury
standard in a self-service environment. It does not even have
a traditional reception desk and
bookings are taken on-line. Innovative technologies make everything run smoothly.

108 Cities

06 Around Wrocław

Lower Silesian Castles

1

2

Every fourth castle or palace
in Poland can be found in
Lower Silesia (Dolny Śląsk), the
region surrounding Wrocław.
The diversity of buildings
and their legends inspires

109

the imagination of every
adventurer, or architecture
lover. It is difficult to resist the
magic of such castles as Czocha
>1, Grodziec >2, Chojnik >3,
Bolków, Książ >4 (the third

3

4

largest in Poland) or Kamieniec
Ząbkowicki (designed by Karl
Friedrich Schinkel). Every
building tells its own story that
is a thread in the rich, colourful
tapestry of the history of the

region, a story of medieval
Piast princes and Silesian
aristocrats, of Czech kings and
Habsburg emperors, English
gardeners, Italian architects
and Soviet soldiers.

110 Cities

07

Poznań
1.07m

142 000

879 €

1853 h

Poznań - Ławica Airport / 5km

key to icons on page 52

You are very likely to find yourself in Poznań
on a business trip. Its citizens, poznaniaks,
have become a Polish synonym of the hard-working, dilligent, frugal. Stereotypes
aside, the city is underpinned with an
entrepreneurial spirit, but there is much to
discover outside the boardroom door
The Poznań goats
(koziołki) fight their
mechanical fight daily
at noon on the façade of
the historic city hall.

Poznań’s GDP per capita is double the Polish average, making it the
second wealthiest big city in the country. It is an international centre of conventions and fairs, home to multinational companies and
many billionaires from the list of Poland’s richest. It also boasts the
highest per capita ratio of retail space in Poland. Even the city’s landmark hotel (temporarily closed) is called Bazar. No wonder then that
the everyday life of the city revolves around places related to trade.
First comes the Poznań international trade fair (Międzynarodowe
Targi Poznańskie) area. Conveniently, the glazed gateway building is
the first thing one sees walking out of the main train station. Over it
looms one of the landmarks of the city – the fifties steel spire, flood
lit in the evenings, showing just how important this place is economically and symbolically for the city. The fairgrounds however, are not
for the average poznaniak, they are mainly for the visiting people.
Both locals and visitors mingle on the Market Square (Rynek). In
the centre of it is another landmark, a renaissance jewelry box of
a building – the graciously ornamented city hall designed by Gian
Battista Quadro. In the warmer part of the year, the square turns
into Poznań’s playground, bustling with life, much like the mercatos
south of the Alps, where the Quadro came from. The Rynek is only
nominally a market nowadays. Poznań’s famous neighbourhood
grocery markets have taken over this function long ago. There you
can buy flowers round the clock, stock up on fresh fruit from the
famously fertile region of Wielkopolska that Poznań is the capital

111

The faĂ§ade of the Stary Browar
shopping, business and cultural
centre gleams over DÄ&#x2026;browski
Park .

112 Cities

07 Poznań

Piotr Korduba

Author of books on an official and intimate history
of Poznań, lecturer at the Institute for Art History
at Adam Mickiewicz University
The Palm House
ul. Matejki 18, 9 am – 4 pm daily
The glass pavilions in the small,
old-fashioned Wilson Park conceal a winter garden. The palm
house dates back to the early
20th century. However, its most
recent, modern form is a rather
unfortunate design choice. The
exotic aura of the interiors is enhanced by the fog that benefits
the tropical flora.
Fruit and vegetable markets >2
Plac Wielkopolski, Rynek Jeżycki,
Rynek Łazarski, Rynek Wildecki,
opening hours vary. Florist stalls
open 24/7
1

Imperial Castle and Zamek
Culture Centre >1
ul. Św. Marcin 80/82
The castle, which used to be the
residence of German emperor
Wilhelm II, is one of the most
extraordinary edifices in this
part of Europe. Although it was
constructed at the beginning of
the 20th century (between 1905
and 1910), its neo-Romanesque
style is reminiscent of the Middle
Ages. Despite its ancient looks
the building is equipped with
modern amenities, including
elevators and central heating.
During the wartime occupation
Albert Speer ordered the castle
rebuilt, the plan being to turn it
into Hitler’s residence. To this
day, the castle’s interiors serve as
an interesting example of Third
Reich aesthetics.
The organisation of the socalled ‘imperial district’, that the
castle remains the most important part of, is still intact and includes the opera house and some
of the awe-inspiring edifices of
the Adam Mickiewicz University.
For many years now the castle
has housed the Zamek Culture
Centre.

Poznań has its historic market
square with a marvellous Renaissance-era city hall and painstakingly renovated tenement
houses. It also has its colourful
and bustling fruit and vegetables
markets, located in the heart of

2

the city (Wielkopolski Square) as
well as in the nearby residential
districts (Jeżycki and Wildecki
Market Squares). These markets are centres of local activity, where men and women of
Poznań have been doing their
daily shopping for decades at
the vendors they are well acquainted with.
Pracownia Cafe Restaurant
ul. Woźna 17, wed – sat:
12 pm – 12 am, sun – tue
12 pm – 11 pm
In a side street off the Old
Market Square is the small and
swanky Pracownia. Located in an
old tenement house, the ascetically designed cafe offers a taste
of Polish, Italian and Eastern
cuisine. In the summer, the cafe
opens its garden in the inner
courtyard. Pracownia is also
worth a visit for a glimpse at its
intriguing regular customers.

113

The tradition of the
Poznań International Fair
(Międzynarodowe Targi
Poznańskie) dates all the way to
1911. Nowadays PIF is the
largest trade fair organizer in

Poland with over 50% of the
country’s total exhibition
area (110,000 m² indoor
and 35,000 m² outdoor space)
and over 60% more exhibitors
each year as the second largest

in Central-Eastern Europe.

of, or look out for regional specialties. For the sweet tooth there is
the rogal marciński – a super-sized croissant, filled with poppy seed,
for others – ser smażony, fried cheese with cumin. Both have been
recently added to the European register of foods of protected geographical origin.
The social importance of neighbourhood markets has been somewhat undermined by Stary Browar – a gigantic retail and cultural complex, erected nearly a decade ago and stone’s throw from the Old Town.
The daring project of Poland’s wealthiest woman, Grażyna Kulczyk,
quickly became a favourite meeting spot for poznaniaks from all walks
of life. But it is interesting to outsiders as well for its flamboyant architecture, and contemporary art shows and performances. Architecture
lovers will also appreciate Stary Browar’s older cousin – Okrąglak (the
round house). The modernist department store opened in 1955 and instantly became a contemporary icon for the city, thanks to its surprising round shape and a modular concrete facade. It is now closed for
renovation and is set to reopen as an office building with a rooftop café.
When you get tired of shopping and striking business deals,
Poznań offers a lot for the soul. It is home to renowned dance and theatre troupes, such as Polski Teatr Tańca, and the biggest performing
arts festival in the country – Malta, organised every year in June, taking over streets, squares, factory lofts and theatres too. Its name is not
a homage to the Mediterranean country, but a reference to the lake

114 Cities

07 Poznań

Thanks to recent restoration
works the ornamentation on the
facade of the city hall can be seen
in its full glory.

and the park on the eastern edge of the city where the festival started
some two decades ago. Speaking of beginnings, Poznań is probably the
place where the Polish state started around 966 AD. Historians and
archaeologists have been waging an academic war over this for a century or so, split into two camps. One follows early chronicles that hint
at Gniezno, a town east of Poznań, where prince Mieszko the First was
officially baptised and pledged his allegiance with the German emperor. The other camp has been ceaselessly digging up the cathedral island (Ostrów Tumski) in Poznań looking for traces of the actual event.
Looking at a well-maintained, affluent city like Poznań now, one can
only say that it would not be such a bad place to start.

115

Wojciech Fibak

Art collector, world-class tennis
player in the 1970s. Raised in Poznań,
lives in Warsaw

Stary Browar / Old Brewery
ul. Półwiejska 32
I am not terribly keen on shopping centres, I’m proud that in my
hometown we’ve got this amazing
space and atmosphere that doesn’t
give you the impression that it’s
just about renting every possible
square metre for the highest commercial rent.
This is thanks to the fantastic architecture that brings together
a post-industrial interior of the 19th
century Hugger brewery and ultramodern technology and construction techniques.
The Old Brewery is much
more than a shopping mall or the
new hotel. Grażyna Kulczyk, the
owner, has turned it into a place
for art lovers, who come en masse
not only for the art exhibitions,
but also the shows of modern
dance, fashion and contemporary
design. It’s a place I go every time
I come to Poznań to visit my mum.

116 Cities

07 PoznaĹ&#x201E;

The artificial Malta Lake in the
eastern part of the city is the heart
of a vast park. It hosts canoeing
and rowing championships
and gave name to a renowned
performing arts festival.

117

Marek Krajewski

Sociologist, author of many books on pop culture,
consumerism, design and art. Lives in Poznań

Okrąglak Department Store >1
ul. Mielżyńskiego 17
Built at the turn of the 1940s and
1950s and designed by Marek
Leykam. In the form of a rotunda,
the interior features a unique
stairway utilising a double spiral.
The building has served a number
of functions, first it was a department store, then a fast-food
court, and later a nightclub. It is
currently slated for refurbishing.
Old Marych Statue
Pedestrian zone on ul. Półwiejska
This statue portraying a man
pushing a bicycle was built about
15 years ago following a competition held by a local newspaper.
Readers voted for an important
local figure who they believed
deserved a statute. Rather peculiarly, the winner was the fictional
hero of a radio programme, Old
Marych. He was a raconteur, who
spoke in our urban dialect. poznaniaks selected a person who
represents ordinary people, not
some historical personage. The
sculpture itself is very egalitarian, it has no pedestal, but stands
directly on the ground.

1

SPOT >2
Dolna Wilda 87, near the Old
Brewery, tue – fri: 12 – 8 pm, sat:
11 am – 8 pm, sun: 11 am – 6 pm; closed
on mon.
SPOT is a multifunctional meeting place bringing together
a design studio, exhibition space,
restaurant, play area for children,
and an educational facility. SPOT
also has its own beach, an area
for playing team sports, and a bicycle rental facility.

2

118 Cities

Licheń

07 Around Poznań

119

The most surprising (and the
largest) of Polandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s modern
churches can be found less than
an hourâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s drive from PoznaĹ&#x201E;.
The shimmering dome is visible
on the horizon from the A2
motorway. The Marian shrine
was completed in 2004 and,
in the words of the architect,
represents the 2000 years
of Christian architecture.
Donations that allowed for the
building of the whole complex
over a space of a decade
were generously provided by
Catholics from Poland and
abroad. The site is visited by 1.5m
pilgrims and tourists a year.

120 Cities

08

Szczecin
0.7m

62 000

823 €

1754 h

Szczecin-Goleniów Solidarność Airport / 45 km

key to icons on page 52

As a vibrant sea port Szczecin has always
welcomed people, goods and ideas from all
directions. Perhaps this is why it feels like
a country within a country
This house in the Old
Town was reconstructed
in the late nineties. The
neighbourhood is still
a construction site.

Towards the end of the Second World War, when the allies were
drafting a new Polish-German border along the river Oder, Szczecin
(Stettin) nearly got split between the two countries. The story goes
that it took five years, until a treaty was eventually signed between
Poland and East Germany in 1950, to settle the border for good a few
kilometres west of the city and thus keep it in one piece. Even though
the river does not constitute a political border now it does divide
Szczecin into two distinct parts – the city proper and Prawobrzeże
(the Right Bank). Both of them have their old town centres of medieval provenance. Oder’s many arms, innumerable canals and green
islands make a commute between the two parts feel a bit like crossing the Mississippi. The adjacent lake Dąbie is the only in Poland that
maritime yachts can sail on.
All of this, along with the presence of a port and a legendary
shipyard, where riots against the communist regime started in 1970,
reinforce the popular perception that Szczecin is a seaside town,
even though it is located 65 kilometres from the Baltic. The sea is
nonetheless an important element of the city’s mythology and identity – every family has someone who is or has worked on the sea or
in maritime business. Water and greenery (including one of Europe’s
largest and most beautiful cemeteries) take up two thirds of the
city’s area, but if you choose to rent a kayak and do the 13 kilometre
tour around the Oder you may get the impression that the city is all
greenery and water.
For a visitor who has already seen Kraków or Warsaw, Szczecin
is bound to feel like a different country. In fact, it is located closer
to Berlin (130 kilometres), Copenhagen (274 km), Stockholm (454
km) and Prague (507 km) than to Warsaw (516 km), not to mention

121

Szczecin promotes itself as
a ‘floating garden’ which is
justified by the fact that 42% of
the area is covered by greenery,
and 23.8% – by water.

122 Cities

08 Szczecin

Plac Grunwaldzki is the largest
of Szczecin’s famous star-shaped
squares.

L

good old Kraków. It is the largest city and the historical capital of
Pomerania (Pomorze), a region that is now split between Poland
and Germany (Vorpommern) and has kept changing hands between Poland, Sweden, Prussia, Denmark and Germany throughout
the last millennium. As a result, the modern city is an amalgam of
different influences.
The houses of the old town (Podzamcze) and the city hall (one
of the newest in Poland – reconstruction started in 1998) resemble
those on the other side of the border, while the splendid gatehouses
(Brama Portowa and Brama Królewska) look like those built around
the same time (1600) in Gdańsk. The castle, reconstructed after the

123

Monika Pyrek

Track and field athlete, world champion
in pole vaulting, resident of Szczecin

Greenery
Szczecin’s parks are the places
I am most eager to return to.
I begin my walk at Jasne Błonia
that lead into Park Kasprowicza,
which is in turn connected with
the Arkoński Forest Park. The
whole area encompasses over 40
acres of greenery located in the
very centre of the city. Flanking
Kasprowicza Park from one side
is Różanka, a rose garden dating
back to 1928 that is bursting with
a range of colours and smells –
pure magic! The garden fell into
oblivion in the 1980s and is now
in the process of recovering its
charm and beauty – there are
over 9,000 roses growing there.

through a waterside walk, where
impressive architecture clashes
with wild nature. The river can be
admired from Wały Chrobrego
>1– viewing terraces that are
Szczecin’s signature landmarks
and places to find inner calm. My
favourite water location Jezioro
Szmaragdowe (Emerald Lake),
an artificial lake in the Zdroje district, created in 1925 on the site
of a flooded chalk excavation pit.
The lake’s water is truly emerald

Water >2
cruises on the river Oder, the
price of boat and steersman varies,
depending on the route chosen:
100 – 450 PLN
Water is omnipresent in Szcze­
cin, perfectly harmonising with
the cityscape. The ‘floating gardens’ slogan used in Szczecin’s
promotional campaign is very
dear to my heart. I recommend
visitors to explore the Oder river

2

1

in colour and is definitely worth
gazing into.
Plac Grunwaldzki – The most
beautiful of the city’s star-shaped
squares: Paris in Szczecin! However, to me it is not the urban
design reminiscent of the French
capital that makes this place so
beautiful, but the men who frequent it to play chess, beginning
in early spring until late autumn.

124 Cities

08 Szczecin

Trasa Zamkowa is a fast road
that links two parts of the city
over the river Oder.

Second World War is a loose variation on the Central European Renaissance. A stone’s throw from it is a place where the future empress of Russia, Catherine the Great, née Sophia Anhalt zu Zerbst,
was born in 1729. A few blocks away you will find a copy of Verrocchio’s Venetian monument of the condottiere Bartolomeo Colleoni.
It was erected in the middle of a roundabout that is one of the hubs
of the city’s radial street structure, modelled after Haussman’s plan
for Paris (the beauty of Szczecin’s radial plan can be best appreciated
from the top floor of the city’s tallest building – the Pazim Tower).
If you realise that – as a sea port – Szczecin has always accepted
people and goods from abroad and that – as the nearest large city – it
is a natural destination for German shoppers, everything starts to
make sense.

125

Łona & Webber

Adam Zieliński, hip-hop artist
and Andrzej Mikosz, music producer.
Both are based in Szczecin
In order to get acquainted with
Szczecin one should head in the
opposite direction from what
common sense would suggest
and upon leaving the train station follow the road leading away
from the city centre. The most
picturesque part of the city is located on the far side. The Venice
of Szczecin – as this is the area
in question - is a riverside industrial estate. Some of its buildings
were constructed in the interwar
period.
The area is easily reached (locals
will gladly provide the necessary
directions) from Kolumba Street
lined with characteristic, beautiful post-industrial edifices.
Brama Jazz Cafe >1
Plac Hołdu Pruskiego 1, daily
10 am – until the last customer
A place worth stopping by for
a morning coffee, housed in
a beautiful old gatehouse.
Bar Pasztecik
ul. Wojska Polskiego 46,
mon – fri: 10 am –7 pm,
sat: 10 am – 4 pm
Visitors to Szczecin absolutely
must take a bite of pasztecik. This
regional delicacy is available at
a number of places, including this
bar at Wojska Polskiego street.
From here it’s a short walk to Jasne Błonia park – a favourite spot
of Szczecin residents, especially
in the summer.
Pionier 1909
ul. Wojska Polskiego 2
There is no doubt about it – this
is the oldest operating cinema in
the world. And truly terrific films
are screened here.

Toruń and Bydgoszcz have been rival cities for decades. An upgrade
of Bydgoszcz Airport makes Toruń green with envy. The rumour
of a big international company planning to set up shop in Toruń
is likely to start riots Bydgoszcz. However, since 1999 the two cities
have shared the duties of regional capital, which makes great sense
since they are but a short commute from each other and are comparable in size and importance. Toruń has a renowned university
and contemporary art centre, a splendid old town and a breathtaking riverfront view. Bydgoszcz has an opera, an airport, an important film festival and the best medical services in the country. Both
deserve closer attention.
Toruń emerged in the Middle Ages as a cosmopolitan trade hub
of the Hansa. The affluence and taste of the bourgeoisie have lasting
evidence in the architecture of the gothic Town Hall, in St. John’s cathedral and St. Jacob’s church. All of them have been meticulously
renovated, which is no wonder since the local university has been
producing world class specialists in monument preservation for decades. Today Toruń is suspended between the splendour of the past
and the challenges of the modern world. The tradition is symbolised
by pierniki ­– gingerbread cakes in various shapes and sizes, manufactured in a local factory named after another pillar of Toruń’s identity – Kopernik. Mikołaj Kopernik – or Nicolaus Copernicus – who
challenged the belief that the universe revolves around earth – was
born in the city in 1473. Needless to say there is a museum dedicated
to the local son and a global hero in his family home. The modern
side of Toruń is best represented by the brand new contemporary art
centre – CSW Znaki Czasu. Completed in 2008, it is currently programmed by the Serbian-born, Rome-based curator Dobrila Denegri.
CSW holds only a handful of exhibitions a year but each one draws
the attention of art critics far beyond Toruń and you are guaranteed to see something fresh every time you visit. In the summer, the

127

Toruń university is, naturally,
named after Mikołaj Kopernik
and features a ceramic tile
composition commemorating
the city’s most famous son on
the façade.

128 Cities

09 Bydgoszcz / Toruń

The so-called Bydgoszcz Venice
is coming back to life after years
of neglect.

L

institution steps outside the building to organise the CoCart music
festival. The art centre will soon rub shoulders with a concert hall
designed by the Spanish architect Fernando Menis.
Somewhat younger than Toruń, Bydgoszcz rose to prominence
in the 19th century, thanks to the industrial revolution, a sizeable
garrison and Kanał Bydgoski (the Bydgoszcz Canal) that opened in
1774, providing a missing link between the water routes of Eastern
and Western Europe. Even now, if you set out to sail from Belarus
to France, the only way would be via Bydgoszcz. For the less ambitious, that is most of us, there is the Bydgoszcz Water Tram that conveniently links a shopping centre in the east with a sports arena in
the west, via the old town, from May to October. The old town itself
cannot be compared in size or architectural quality with the one in
Toruń, but it boasts two things that the other one cannot. There is
a piece of excellent contemporary architecture, in the form of the
riverfront BRE Bank headquarters, completed in 1998 and ageing
gracefully, and a green island (Wyspa Młyńska) with a manicured

129

Krzysztof Bober

Founder of Plateaux Foundation, which promotes
contemporary music and audiovisual art in Poland, creator
of the Plateaux festival. Lives in Warsaw
To ru ń
City Park on Bydgoskie
Przedmieście >1
ul. Bydgoska
The oldest and largest city park in
Toruń, landscaped in the English
style, is one of the most interesting of its kind in Poland. Its
unique character is additionally
emphasised by the unique secessionist architecture of Bydgoskie
Przedmieście surrounding the
park.
Winiarnia Niebo
ul. Rynek Staromiejski 1,
thu – sun: 12 pm – midnight;
fri – sat: 12 pm – 2 am
A small, cosy café in the grounds
of the Town Hall. Unique atmosphere of a Toruń cellar and those
sofas, they are simply made for
sinking into. You can always drop
in for a coffee or mulled wine and
relax under the brick vaults.
Tantra
ul. Ślusarska 5, mon – thu:
3 pm – midnight; fri – sat: 12 pm – 2 am;
sun: 12 pm – midnight

1

B y d g o s zc z
Mózg
ul. Gdańska 10, mon – sat: from
4 pm; sun: from 6 pm
The leading venue for independent music in the region. This is the
birthplace of Yass, the best jazz
bands, instrumentalists and leading artists of the experimental
music scene perform here. Brain
is also a venue for exhibitions and

The little streets off the New
Market Square offer many hidden
gems. One of them is Tantra, an
Indian-themed cafe. It’s an unpretentious place with a touch of
fantasy. Excellent selection of teas,
coffees and unusual cocktails.
Pierogarnia Stary Toruń >2
ul. Most Pauliński 2/10, mon – sun
11 am – midnight
The best pierogi in town. The
restaurant is located near the
Arsenal – on the site of a former
bridge. Various types of dumpling
dough and stuffing (particularly
recommended are fluffy, baked
piecuchy dumplings); multi-storey
interior, typical for Toruń. Rustic,
warm atmosphere.

various other cultural events.
The club boasts an attractive bar
where you can sit and chat, while
listening to great music.
Wyspa Młyńska /
The Mill Island
This is a complex of buildings
traversed by two meandering
rivers: Brda and Młynówka. It
has become a true showpiece of
the city, thanks to a revitalization project lasting several years.
It brings the old and the new
together. For a long time, Mill
Island was the venue for various
cultural initiatives – among others hosting the summer BWA
exhibitions.
BWA Gallery ul. Gdańska 20,
tue – thu: 10 am – 6 pm;
fri: 12 pm – 8 pm; sat – sun:
11.30 am – 4.30 pm
The most interesting venue on
the cultural map of Bydgoszcz,
presenting interesting exhibitions and projects exploring
completely unknown aspects of
contemporary art in the region.

2

130 Cities

09 Bydgoszcz / Toruń

It took over thirty years to build
it, but now Bydgoszcz can boast
the newest and most modern
opera in the country that also
doubles as a convention centre.

park that is a huge draw for the locals in the warmer part of the year.
The neighbouring quarters overlooking a canal, dubbed, somewhat
exaggeratedly, the Venice of the North, are now undergoing something of a revival after years of neglect. Waterside cafes and restaurants are becoming a Bydgoszcz specialyty.
The city is also famous for its musical venues. Even though it was
constructed some sixty years ago, Filharmonia Pomorska is still considered to have the best acoustic quality in the country. Recently, the
city completed an opera house, finishing a laborious process started
in 1974. A concrete carcass of the unfinished building loomed over the
city for decades, as a testament to the inefficiency of the communist
state and the delusions of grandeur of local apparatchiks. Opened in
2006, the 860-seat Opera Nova is a source of civic pride. It also serves
as a convention centre and in December of 2010 it became home to the
international festival of cinematography – Camerimage. A much deserved honour for one of the most underestimated cities in Poland.

131

Janusz Leon Wiśniewski

Writer and scientist, currently based in Frankfurt

The Kuyavian-Pomeranian
Voivodeship inspires awe in
first-time visitors, but also in
those who – like me – call this region home and have lived there
for many years. To me its true
heart (and I ask the residents
of nearby cities of Bydgoszcz
and Włocławek to forgive me)
is Toruń, an old city with a long
history but also young thanks
to the thriving academic life of
its renowned university. Toruń,
which was spared the bombings of World War II, is a gem
of Gothic architecture. In 1997,
it was designated a UNESCO
World Heritage Site.
The House of Mikolaj Kopernik,
ul. Kopernika 15/17; City Hall, ul.
Rynek Staromiejski 1, depend on
the season: 10 am – 4/6 pm
The narrow streets around the
market square are worth a stroll
– visitors should head in the
direction of the Leaning Tower
/ Krzywa Wieża, which indeed
is leaning (very much so in fact)
to one side, and marvel at the
gothic houses along Ciasna /
Narrow street, which is, indeed,
very narrow. St. John’s / Św.
Jana Church, where Copernicus
was baptised, as well as what is
believed to be the astronomer’s
house are also worth a visit. It
is best to finish the walk at the
Old Town Square >1, where the
City Hall and Artus Court are
located.

Also worth a visit is the pancake
shop Manekin, which is considered to serve the best pancakes
in Poland.

On the ground floor of the aforementioned Artus Court is a shop
offering the world-famous Toruń
gingerbread cookies made according to a recipe as old as the
city itself and as well protected
a secret as that of the Coca Cola

(not only Polish) and delicious
wines in a refined décor in the
space of a flat.
Piwnice
ul. Gagarina 11,
for bookings send an e-mail to: przewodnicy@turystyka.torun.pl
I sometimes like to leave Toruń for
a few hours and head to Piwnice,
a small town about 10 km away.
Poland’s largest radio telescope
is located in Piwnice’s astronomical observatory. The site offers its
visitors not only the opportunity
to look at the stars from ‘up close’,
but also to listen to fascinating lectures about the universe.

132 Cities

09 Bydgoszcz / Toruń

Dobrila Denegri

Historian and independent curator, artistic
director of the Centre of Contemporary Art
in Toruń. Born in Belgrade

1

What I like most about Toruń
is not only CoCA, as one might
suppose – I really like a couple of
places that are not on the official,
tourist & medieval map of the city,
like the Bydgoskie Przedmieście
district, with it’s fabulous architectural examples of modernism. It’s
got a lovely park, a bit neglected,
but that’s one if its charms, making it even more romantic. I really
love the Park Miejski in Toruń,
with its spectacular views of the
river Wisła.
As for places to hang out in
Toruń, I would recommend a precapitalist adventure at the Pod

Marek Żydowicz
Chairman of the Tumult
Foundation, director of the Plus
Camerimage Festival, resident
of Bydgoszcz

Atlantem Resaurant (ul. Ducha
Świętego 3) – it made me feel
really nostalgic, not trendy at
all; a perfect place for a drink if
you’re tired of all the obvious
tourist destinations.
As for Torun’s clubs, there’s
eNeRDe, which could just as
well be in Berlin; it’s very underground. For lazy summertime
evenings – there’s a nice Na
Końcu Świata (ul. Podmurna 4 – 6),
club, neighbouring the ruins of
the Teutonic castle.
I also like the Ethnographic
Museum (Wały gen. Sikorskiego 19,
depending on the season; tue – fri:

9 – 16/17, sat – sun: 10 – 16/18) – it’s
like a piece of a rural fairy tale in
the centre of the city, with a couple of cabins, a wind mill and some
cottages, in an old park, very quiet
and peaceful.
As for hotels in Toruń – those
with deep pockets will certainly
like 1231 Hotel (ul. Przedzamcze 6,
reservation: +48 56 619 09 10), situated in an old mill, literally over
a real stream. I also recommend
the Petit Fleur >1 (ul. Piekary 25,
reservation: tel.+ 48 56 621 51 00),
super cosy and in the very centre
of the Old Town.

One of the most modern and versatile music theatres in Poland,
Opera Nova, which houses the
Plus Camerimage Festival, has
proven that it aims at a synergy
of the arts and that partnership
in culture and arts always has its
benefits.

09 Bydgoszcz / Toruń

The Centre for Contemporary
Art in Toruń was the first of the
wave of new museum buildings
constructed in Poland thanks to
an influx of European funds .

Cities 133

134 Cities

10

Lublin
0.7m

86 000

769 €

1820 h

Warsaw Chopin Airport / 180 km

key to icons on page 52

It is difficult to talk about Lublin without
resorting to the tired East-meets-West
cliché. The reality is that the city lives up to
the slogan, so why not stick to it?

In the nineteenth
century, the ItalianPolish architect Antonio
Corazzi converted the
Jesuite church, the
largest in the city, into
a Catholic cathedral.

The Trinity Chapel at the Lublin Castle serves as a lasting symbol of
the peaceful intertwining of two cultures. It was the first church that
the recently christened prince of Lithuania, Władysław Jagiełło, saw
on his visit to Poland. In 1418 he ordered painters to adorn the gothic
chapel with Byzantine-style frescoes – hence the picturesque fusion of
Western architecture and Eastern ornamentation. It is also in Lublin
where the union between the Polish Kingdom and the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania was officially confirmed in 1569, creating a vast state spanning today’s Eastern Poland, Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania.
Lublin grew rapidly in 19th century, when it was a part of the
Russian Empire. No wonder that there are lots of traces of the Russian presence left. Along some Orthodox churches, you will find public buildings modelled after those in St. Petersburg, like the former
Russian State Bank headquarters in the city’s main promenade –
Krakowskie Przedmieście. East meets west again in Lublin’s charming Old Town. It has an air of a provincial small town somewhere in
Eastern Europe, but at the same time dazzles with ornate facades of
renaissance burgher houses designed by Italian architects. Later, in
early 20th century, this Lublin brand of renaissance became one of
the main inspirations for Polish national style, so do not be surprised
to find copies in other regions.
For centuries, Lublin, also known as ‫ןילבול‬, was one of the most
important centres of Jewish culture in Europe. Even though Jews
made up one third of the city’s population before the Second World
War, there are not many traces of their presence left. There is a vast
cemetery in Kalinowszczyzna, north of the Old Town. Somewhere in
Podzamcze, the area in a valley beneath the castle, there is a plaque
on the site of the great Maharshala synagogue and an old street light

135

Brama Krakowska (the Kraków
Gate) leads from the Old Town
to Krakowskie Przedmieście –
Lublin’s main promenade.

136 Cities

10 Lublin

The Lublin Science and
­Technology Park, gradually
expanding since 2009, is set to
boost innovation in the city and
help it ­develop renewable energy
sources.

L

in Podwale Street that never goes out. It commemorates the 26,000
Lublin Jews sent to the concentration camp in Bełżec over one month
in the spring of 1942.
Other than that, the neighbourhood was razed during or immediately after the war. Foundations of Jewish houses are buried
under an east-west (again!) expressway, Aleja Tysiąclecia, and a bus
station. Ugly as it is, the coach terminal is a vital connection point
between modern Poland, Ukraine and Belarus. There is a lot of traffic
across the border and Lublin is a natural entry point to Poland and
the Schengen zone in general. Ukrainians eagerly come to study in
Lublin and the local university is one of the most important centres
of research on Ukrainian language, literature and culture. Local authorities, cultural institutions and NGOs are tightening their partnerships with Lviv, the biggest city of Western Ukraine, just across
the border.
The East-West narrative took a surprising twist a few years
ago, during renovation of the castle hill. The courtyard was repaved with stone, almost identical to local limestone, shipped all
the way from China.

137

Krzysztof Cugowski

Frontman of the rock band Budka Suflera,
now in the fifth decade of his career,
sings praise of his hometown
The Old Town
Lublin boasts one of the few old
towns in Poland that survived the
war and has remained untouched
to this day. Some elements of the
recently-restored houses of the
Old Town date from the Renaissance and late Gothic periods. It’s
also worth seeing Kraków Gate,
leading to the Old Town and the
equally beautiful Trynitarska
Gate nearby.

century frescoes, presenting,
among others, King Władysław
Jagiełło. The castle chapel is phenomenal – unique in Poland.

The early nineteenth century castle was damaged many times. On
the premises of the castle there
is a very interesting thirteenth
century tower and church, where
you can see restored fourteenth

The main pedestrian street of
Lublin. The section near the Old
Town and Town Hall offers many
attractive bars and restaurants.

Krakowskie Przedmieście

Underground Lublin >2
Rynek 1, sat – sun: 12 pm, 1 pm,
2 pm, 4 pm, normal – 9pln, reduced – 7pln
A few years ago a tourist trail was
marked out in the atmospheric
restored cellars of the Old Town.
The intricate system of winding
and sometimes very narrow corridors is worth seeing, particularly in the evenings under the
light of burning torches.
Teatr w Budowie /
Theatre under Construction
ul. Lubomelska 1 – 3

1

2

I find this place particularly exceptional. The theatre has been
under construction for forty-odd
years. It is situated in the very
heart of Lublin, in a very beautiful
location. If it is ever completed
it will become a very important
cultural centre for Lublin. It is
currently partly finished: the Lublin Philharmonic Hall and Musical
Theatre are found at the back of
the building. Saski Park, established in the nineteenth century,
is situated opposite the theatre.

138 Cities

10 Around Lublin

Kazimierz
Dolny

Kazimierz Dolny is a perfect
Polish small town, set in
a picturesque valley at the foot
of a ruined medieval castle, with
a cobble-stoned, sloping market
square, three bijoux churches,

Kazimierz
dolny

139

renaissance granaries lining the
WisĹ&#x201A;a riverfront and many traces
of a once vibrant Jewish culture.
No wonder that it was discovered
and eagerly explored by artists
early in the 20th century. Now it

is a favourite weekend getaway
for Lublin and Warsaw artists,
intellectuals and professionals
who snap up summer homes
in the town itself and nearby
villages. Kazimierz Dolny can be

seen at its most charming, quiet
and slow on weekdays.

140 Cities

11

Białystok
0.5m

50 000

748 €

1720 h

Warsaw Chopin Airport / 208 km

key to icons on page 52

Locals recommend
a stroll around Bojary
– a neighbourhood
composed of old
wooden working class
homes.

Białystok is now a fairly large city with all
the infrastructure of a regional capital, but
it still retains some of the charm of a much
smaller place. The scale of Lipowa – the
main street, lined with two and three storey
houses, leading up to a pedestrian market
square (Rynek Kościuszki) - strengthens
this impression. Look out for the post-war
buildings around the square and look up to
see graffito decorations of ancient warriors,
zodiac signs and other themes that were
supposed to give this rather new city an old
town feel
In fact, the history of Białystok is relatively short. It grew rapidly
into a multicultural city in the 19th century thanks to a railroad linking Vienna and St. Petersburg via Warsaw and Vilnius and an industrial boom. The residence of the aristocratic Branicki family, which
owned Białystok before it became an industrial hub, marks the eastern end of Lipowa Street, a few steps away from the Market Square.
Meticulously restored after the Second World War and now housing the Medical University of Białystok, the palace is surrounded by
a vast park and a baroque French-style garden.
Białystok’s other landmarks are a far departure from the pre-industrial idyll of the residence. At the opposite end of Lipowa Street,
on a small hill, there is the St. Roch church with its 78-metre tall spire.
The building, equally inspired by gothic cathedrals and Manhattan’s
skyscrapers, was designed in the 1920s and is said to be one of the finest churches built in Poland in the last century. Set to become a new

141

Lipowa, the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s high street,
used to be named after Marshal
PiĹ&#x201A;sudski, Hitler and Stalin,
before going back to its historical
name for good in the fifties. It

links the Market Square with the
magnificent St. Rochus church (in
the foreground).

142 Cities

11 Białystok

The so-called city hall in fact never
housed Białystok’s municipal
authorities. Local merchants used
the space in the lower part for
shops and firemen used the tall
tower for observation.

icon of the city is the new opera house south of Lipowa Street. The
monumental edifice, designed by Marek Budzyński, architect of the
acclaimed university library in Warsaw, will be covered with lush
vegetation. It seems very fitting for a city that recently stunned the
rest of the country when a survey showed it had the highest standard of living among the 12 biggest Polish cities. This is largely due to
the clean environment, the abundance of parks and the proximity to
nature. As early as 1993 Białystok became the first Polish member of
the Healthy Cities Network set up by the WHO. It is no surprise that
a historically multicultural place, now located just off the eastern
border of the country, has the highest percentage of non-Catholic
and non-Polish population of all the big Polish cities. Long gone is the
Jewish population that made up nearly a half of Białystok’s population before the Second World War, but Belarusians and Tatars are
large minorities, as evidenced by the onion domes of modern Orthodox churches, a construction site of the Islamic cultural centre and
the soft local accent.

143

One of the last remains of
the tsar’s hunting lodge in
Białowieża, near Białystok.
The national park museum
in Białowieża is a place to
learn about these aspects of

the forest’s rich wildlife that
flourishes in the parts of the
forests restricted for tourists.

The surrounding countryside is one of the most culturally
diverse areas in Poland. Tykocin is a minuscule town with a grand
Market Square and a well preserved ancient synagogue. In some
villages, ethnic minorities are the majority. In the Tatar village of
Kruszyniany you will find a beautiful wooden mosque. The villages
south east of Białystok are almost uniquely Belarusian. And a mere
90-minute drive away from the city there is the Holy Grabarka Hill
– the most important Orthodox sanctuary in Poland, surrounded
by a forest of crosses. Travelling around Białystok is a journey in
time, back to the days when Poland was one of the most diverse
countries in Europe, where Poles made up no more than two thirds
of the population.

144 Cities

11 Białystok

Monika Szewczyk
Director of Białystok’s acclaimed
Arsenał Gallery

1

Branicki Palace >1
ul. Jana Kilińskiego 1,
tue – Fr, 3:30 – 5:30 pm,
sat – sun: 9 am – 5 pm.
A historical palace in Białystok,
one of the best-preserved aristocratic mansions from the Saxon
period on Polish territory. Built
in the late-Baroque style and
often referred to as the Versailles
of the Podlasie region, the Versailles of the North or the ‘Polish
Versailles’.
Jewish Heritage Trail
in Białystok >2
Few traces remain of the Jewish presence in Białystok.
Among those that survived to
the present day are three synagogue buildings, a few tenement
houses, some architectural
details, memorials and memorial plaques and a cemetery. All
the more reason to preserve

the memory about the city’s
once vibrant and sizable Jewish
population, present in Białystok
between 1658 and 1939 (until
the outbreak of World War II).
The trail leads visitors to sites
connected with the history of
Białystok’s Jews, presenting the
Jewish population in the context
of the multi-cultural society of
pre-war Poland and promoting
elements of Jewish culture and
tradition.
The city’s pedestrian zone
encompasses Kościuszko
Square as well as Suraska and
Kilińskiego streets. The hungry
and thirsty will find a few inexpensive eateries there serving
Polish cuisine such as Społem
Podlasiak (ul. Rynek Kościuszki
15) and Astoria (ul. Sienkiewicza 4, opening hours: 1 – 10 pm
mon – sat, 12 – 10 pm sun) – with
a terrace overlooking the Market Square.

Białystok Manufacturers’ Trail
Presenting the history of the
city’s industrial prosperity and of
local companies, run by Nowik,
Hasbach, Becker, Trylling, Moes
and Janowski, the trail leads to
factory buildings, mansions and
villas that have survived to the
present day. The functions they
had served may have changed
repeatedly over time but the
edifices themselves testify to the
industrial heyday from the turn
of the 20th century.
Metro Club >3
ul. Białówny 9a, thu – sat:
7 pm – 2 am, tue – wed: 7 pm – 6 am
Since its opening in the
mid – 1990s Metro’s DJ deck and
stage have seen performances
by a host of artists from various
parts of Poland and the world.
The venue boasts a great sound
system and interesting décor,

145

Ignacy Karpowicz

Writer, winner of the 2010 Polityka
Passport Award in the literature
category

2

4

3

with two bars, a dance hall and
lounge area.
Rynek Antiquarian Bookseller
Rynek Kościuszki 13,
mon – fri: 10 am – 6 pm
The bookshop offers a journey
to the East through its extensive
offer of Central and Eastern
European literature from Belarus, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia,
Ukraine, Russia and Serbia.
Additionally, the shop boasts
an impressive selection of vinyl
records.

5

When visiting Białystok it is
worth getting to know three
tourist routes. The first is the
wooden architecture trail. I recommend a walk to the district
of Bojary >4, with beautiful old
wooden houses. Here you can
see and feel the pre-war climate
of an Eastern Polish borderland
town. It also becomes evident
that brick or concrete is not necessarily better or more beautiful
than wood.
The next is the Esperanto and
Zamenhof trail. It is worth starting from the newly-opened
Ludwik Zamenhof Centre >5
(ul. Warszawska 19), which, as
a new institution, is vibrant and
not yet fossilized. It’s a good place
to see and understand the place
in which Esperanto was born.

Although an artificial language,
Esperanto had noble intentions
and a very interesting history.
I would take my guests to the
­Cehowa Café (ul. Warszawska
4/6). Firstly, because they serve
kiszka ziemniaczana (potato sausage) – a regional delicacy based
on potatoes, and secondly, because you can still sense the old
communist era. Though unattractive, Cechowa is not pretentious.
Such establishments are already
a rarity with the world flooded
with restaurant chains and smart
restaurants with sophisticated
cuisine. Eating excellent food in
a flashy restaurant for a lot of
money has become so easy that
it’s not worth recommending. But
Cechowa is different.

146 Cities

12

Rzeszów
0.6m

62 000

777 €

1763 h

Rzeszów – Jasionka Airport / 10 km

key to icons on page 52

The tall, communistera Revolution
Monument is equally
loved and loathed, but
whether one likes it
or not, it is a natural
orientation point and
an involuntary icon of
Rzeszów.

Much like Białystok, Rzeszów had lived
a quiet life for centuries until a combination
of political and economic circumstances
gave it a sudden boost. The castle and the
old town that you can see now were one
of dozens of a similar kind in southeastern
Poland. In fact many cities within a short
drive from Rzeszów, such as Sandomierz
and Jarosław, used to be much more
important than they are today and can
boast impressive historical monuments that
contrast with their present significance
Rzeszów used to be just a stop on an ancient trans-continental trading route leading from German cities via Wrocław and Kraków to
Lviv and further into Ukraine and towards the Black Sea. This historical route was followed with a railroad in the nineteenth century
and recently with the A4 motorway, soon to span Poland from east
to west and facilitate the flow of people during the Euro 2012 football championships. The city got its first boost from the railroad and
experienced a period of rapid modernisation at the turn of the last
century, evidenced by elegant art nouveau villas and interesting public buildings from that period.
Next, in the 1930s it was incorporated into an ambitious plan
to industrialise a hitherto underdeveloped part of Poland by building the Central Industrial District (COP) there. Rzeszów and nearby
towns such as Mielec and Stalowa Wola became hubs for Polish aircraft and other technology-based industries. After the Second World
War Rzeszów involuntarily profited from the fact that Lviv, a large

147

Rzeszów’s economy relies
on cutting edge technology,
but the city retains an oldworldly, small city charm and
benefits from the proximity of
mountain resorts.

and cosmopolitan city equal in importance to Kraków, found itself
on the Soviet Ukrainian side of the new eastern border. Rzeszów
took on new functions, filling in for the absent metropolis and accepting increasing amounts of investment in modern industry. The
controversial, clitoris-shaped monument to Soviet soldiers erected
at one of main intersections in the 1970s has become an icon of the
new Rzeszów, along with a Chinese Wall of tower blocks built across
the river from the old town.
There are two sides to Rzeszów now. The city maintains the
charm of a small, walkable, cyclable city, with a beautiful market
square (make sure to take a tour of the underground corridors

148 Cities

12 Rzesz贸w

The Lubomirski Castle sits
on a bastion designed by the
great Dutch baroque architect
Tylman van Gameren.

and vaults), lots of greenery, clean tap water and a growing student
population. On the other hand, Rzesz贸w is an ambitious little beast
that survived the nosedive of heavy industries in post-1989 Poland.
In 2001 it founded a university, it attracts lots of foreign investment
and drives the ambitious project of Aircraft Valley (Dolina Lotnicza):
a cluster of companies, education facilities and research centres of
European importance, with Politechnika Rzeszowska at its young
heart. Overall, the high technology cluster is estimated to provide
one third of all jobs in the city. It is no coincidence that in 2009 the
expanded Jasionka airport started to operate direct flights to New
York. Rzesz贸w is living, working, studying proof that the historical
division between the developed Poland A and the rural Poland B is
already history.

149

Katarzyna Kordoń & Beata Pisula

Owners of K&K Selekt, the only Polish company dealing in
international consulting between Asia and Europe. Both are
based in Rzeszów
Dworek restaurant
ul. Dąbrowskiego 19,
daily: 10 am – 10 pm
A terrific place for a business
lunch – elegant vintage interiors,
great service and a beautiful
garden (especially in the summertime).
Czarny Kot restaurant
ul. Mickiewicza 4,
daily: 1 pm – 11 pm
Housed in a newly renovated cellar
and boasting a stylish interior, the
restaurant offers an impressive selection of delicious dishes (caution,
size of the portions is also impressive!) A popular meeting venue for
foreign businessmen. And if the
dinner stretches past the afternoon tea, it is worth stopping by...

Wiedeńska Pastry Shop
ul. Rynek 13-14,
mon – fri: 9 am – 9 pm,
sat&sun: 10 am – 9 pm
Located in the 4-star Ambasador
Hotel in the Market Square, the
pastry shop offers tasty delicacies of the palate year-round.
Hotel Grand Cafe
ul. Dymnickiego 1A
Unforgettable décor of both
the hotel and the cafe, delicious
coffee, wonderful service and
a great location in the very centre
of the city.

Engineer working at the European Centre
for Nuclear Research in Geneva (CERN) on
construction of the LHC particle accelerator
Those who wish to forget about
daily realities and take a break
among wild nature should
go to the Polish foothills of
­Bieszczady. This is one of the
wildest corners of Poland and
can be reached by car, about 1.5
hours from Rzeszów.
Bieszczady offers many recreational options. The Solińskie
lake, with its many wild coves,
is paradise for those who love
watersports and fishing. Bike
trails allow one to test one’s limits and endurance. For the less
active, I recommend walks in
the Sine Wiry reserve. Choose
an unmarked trail and you may
spot a bear, lynx or even a bison. It’s also worth visiting the
non-extant village of Łopienka
with its old stone temple – an

Klubowa Restaurant
ul. Ks. Jałowego 23a, daily,
10 pm – 7 pm

ancient worship site and pilgrimage destination for the region’s
inhabitants.
Sunny autumn is the best time
to visit the Bieszczady. Between
September and October – when
the noise of the high season
has died down – the mountains
reveal their most beautiful side.
That’s when you can enjoy the
multi-coloured carpet of leaves,
which is the most beautiful in
the highest part of Bieszczady.
My personal recommendation is the route from Wetliny
through the Orłowicza mountain pass, towards Połonina
Wetlińska, where you can relax
in a modest PTTK (Polish Tourist and Sightseeing Society) hostel and enjoy a hot Bieszczadystyle tea with lemon.

150 Nature

Nature
Poland was a late bloomer when
it came to industrialisation or
modern farming. What was
considered a disadvantage for
decades has turned out to be an
asset. It means that there are parts
of the country, especially in the
northeast, where primeval forests
and vast marshes never had to
make way to agriculture, where
lakes were never threatened with
pollution. From the white, sandy
Baltic beaches in the north, to the
mountains in the south, there is
plenty to be discovered

151

02

01

03
04

05

08

Nature areas

07
06

Forests
Nature 2000 areas
National Parks
Landscape Parks

05

Catch them if you can

Białowieża

An untouched primeval forest

02

The Baltic coast

06

Bieszczady

With white sandy beaches and dramatic cliffs

Poland’s least-populated mountains

03

Kaszuby

07

Tatra Mountains

A green paradise a stone’s throw fromTricity

Highest mountains in the country

08

Sudety

Hills, forests, castles, spas

01

The Moving Dunes

Warmia, Mazury
Suwalszczyzna
04

The land of a three thousand lakes

152 Nature

01

The Moving Dunes

153

A few kilometres from the Baltic
resort of Łeba there is a vast lake.
It used to be a bay, but it is now
cut off from the sea by a thin strip
of land. This strip is covered with
a miniature desert – 500 hectares

of dunes that constantly shift
their position, by 3.5 to 10 metres
a year. At this speed, you will not
be able to witness the movement,
but the windswept dunes are
impressive nevertheless. Some

of them, called white mountains,
reach up to 30 metres in height.
On the edge of the national park
from the 115 metre high Rowokół
hill, you can admire a spectacular
view of the lake and the dunes.

154 Nature

02

The Baltic coast

From Ĺ&#x161;winoujĹ&#x203A;cie in the west
to Piaski in the east, the Baltic
coast spans 775 kilometres, from
Germany to Russia. Yes, there are
resorts swarmed with tourists,
but for each one of them there

is a dozen quiet villages. Yes, the
weather is uncertain and the
average temperature of water
in the summer is somewhere
between 17 and 21Ë&#x161;C, but these
are fully rewarded by the sight of

155

white and wide sandy beaches
and many other natural wonders:
the dramatic cliff coastline
in Wolin island (towering 93
metres above the sea) and in
Rozewie (pictured above) â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the

northernmost chunk of Poland,
or the improbably narrow Hel
peninsula. The quality of water
along the Polish coastline is
tested and certified every year.
Luckily, Poles are very conformist

in their holiday habits, so the
whole coast is empty between
September and June. Pick your
favourite kilometre of the 775.

156 Nature

03

Kaszuby

157

Driving west from the Â­Tricity,
once you make your way
through the suburbs that sit
along the S6 bypass road, you
will find yourself in the heart of
Kaszuby. The Kaszuby Lakeland

(Pojezierze Kaszubskie) covers
around 300 square kilometres
of rolling hills, green forests,
clear lakes, small towns and
villages. The most picturesque
part, sprawling around the

town Kartuzy, is dubbed
the Kaszuby Switzerland
(Szwajcaria Kaszubska), for its
hilly landscape. The highest of
them, WieĹźyca, is the best place
to take in the beautiful view.

158 Nature

Warmia
Mazury
Suwalszczyzna
04

This is the least populated part
of Poland, with only one large
city, the regional capital Olsztyn.
Otherwise, driving down route
16 that spans the whole region,
you will mostly see forests and

lakes, including the biggest lake –
Śniardwy, and the deepest – the
cobalt blue Hańcza. There are at
least a three thousand of them. The
lakes are a refuge for wild birds,
such as cormorants or black storks,

159

and the forests are home to bison,
foxes, martens and muskrats. No
wonder Mazury (Masurian Lake
District) is in the final of the internet
poll New7Wonders. Yachting
aficionados flock to the Mazury

Lakeland (Pojezierze Mazurskie).
Slow life enthusiasts should go for
a 11-hour cruise down the ancient
Elbląg – Ostróda canal. For history
and architecture lovers there is lots
to discover: from medieval Teutonic

Out of all the forests in Poland,
this one is the least spoilt
by civilization. Most of the
Białowieża National Park is
not accessible to tourists, but
the part that you can visit

is spectacular enough. The
village Białowieża is home to
the National Park Museum,
the palace park founded for
the pleasure of Russian tsars,
featuring exotic plants, and

161

first and foremost a departure
point for visiting the forest and
the Polish bison enclosure. The
Polish bison (żubr) are a species
that used to populate Central
European forests for thousands

of years. The last wild żubr was
killed in 1919, but a few years
later the International Bison
Protection Society started to
rebuild the population from the
ones living in a zoo. The bison

returned to Białowieża forest
(Puszcza Białowieska) in 1929.
Now there are around 700
hundred of them both on the
Polish and the Belarussian side of
the border.

162 Nature

06

Bieszczady

163

The southernmost part of Poland
is wedged between Ukraine
and Slovakia. It is also one of the
least populated, partly because
of the ethnic cleansing that the
communists subjected the Łemko

minority to in the 40s and 50s.
The Bieszczady mountains are
one of the most peaceful parts of
the country now, with the only
concentration of tourism around
the artificial Solina lake (Jezioro

Solińskie). Above it there are
mountain ranges called połonina,
with flat peaks that feel like
elevated promenades. Behind
them, tucked away in the valleys
are quiet villages.

164 Nature

07

Tatra Mountains

The highest Polish mountains,
part of the Carpathian range,
towering above the town of
Zakopane, can be seen in their
entire splendour from the top
of Gubałówka, a hill on the

165

other side of the town. Tatry
offer something for everyone. A
trek up the valleys Kościeliska
or Chochołowska is almost
like a walk in the park even for
beginners, as is a trip to Morskie

Oko – a picturesque lake nestled
between the mountains. Giewont
– the most famous mountain in
Poland is more of a challenge. Big
as they are, Tatry seem almost
too small for the amount of

people who want to visit them.
It is best advised to go head
there in autumn or spring, that is
outside the skiing season and the
summer holiday when visitors
numbers peak.

166 Nature

08

Sudety

First of all, this is one of the
warmest spots in Poland (save for
the actual mountains) with a mild
winter and an early spring. The
Sudety are split between Poland,
Czech Republic and Germany.

167

The region is so full of natural and
architectural attractions that one
might suspect it’s a theme park
created for sightseeing pleasure.
From the snowy peak of Śnieżka
to a concentration of castles

(most of them turned into superb
hotels) in the valley around
Jelenia Góra, from renowned
resorts such as Cieplice and
Karpacz to wonders of nature
such as the peculiar rocks on

the volcano-shaped Szczeliniec
mountain. Already hugely
popular with German tourists,
Sudety are set to become one of
Poland’s main draws.

168 Nature

Ojc贸w National Park
Marcin Mostafa &
Natalia Paszkowska
Founders of the studio WWAA,
architects of the acclaimed Polish Pavilion
for the 2010 Expo in Shanghai

169

We discovered this magical
place in the middle of winter,
on our way home to Warsaw
from a snowboarding holiday.
What may have contributed to
the charm of our experience
was the fact that we only found
one lodge that was open, and in
which we were the only guests...
The secluded park valley offers
astounding views and brings

to mind a sophisticated design
reminiscent of a computer
adventure game (like Siberia).
There is everything there: ruins
of a medieval castle, a strange
rock formation in the shape of
a bludgeon, a plethora of caves,
houses overgrown with trees
and a mysterious eclectic chapel
on the water. All accompanied
by architecture fairly coherent

in style. The park’s size (it is the
smallest of Polish national parks)
makes it possible for visitors to
explore Ojców within a day or
two and leave with the pleasant
conviction that they know the
place like the back of their hand.

170 Nature

Rural Retreats

Philip Niedenthal
Editor-in-chief of Podróże,
a monthly travel magazine
Gallery 69 >1
Dorotowo 38, near Olsztyn,
bookings: +48 89 5136480
This place is a breath of fresh
air for design lovers. From the
architecture and the interiors to
the cuisine – the hotel is full of
original ideas and it makes for
a relaxing stay. It has a private,
secluded beach picturesquely
located on the 1000-hectare
Wulpińskie lake.

1

Oberża pod Psem >2
Kadzidłowo 1, Mazury,
bookings: +48 87 425 74 74
Hidden in the forest, the lodge
is a perfect destination for
a weekend get-away, both in
summer and winter, where
one can get some warmth in
the Russian banya. Plus, they
serve the world’s best caramel
pancakes – which in themselves
make Kadzidłów worth a visit.

2

Kania Lodge >3
Sytna Góra 10,
40 minutes from Gdańsk,
bookings: +48 58 681 06 77
“I come here to admire
the beauty of ‘Kashubian
Switzerland’, bathe in the semiprivate lake, enjoy the wonderful
cuisine and the impressive
selection of wines, as well as the
hospitality and sense of humour
of the owner”, says John Borrell,

3

a native of New Zealand. Nothing
compares to a dinner on the
terrace overlooking the lake and
the lawn, on which the sheep
fulfil the role of environmentallyfriendly lawnmowers.

Mazury
Mazury is my mysterious and
magical land – hundreds of lakes
and canals, which I sailed when
I was young. The thought of them
makes me nostalgic, because
I made my first film there – Knife
in the Water. Mazury is a wonder.

Marek Kamiński
Traveller, conqueror of both the
North and the South Poles, lives
in Sopot

Wisła
For me, the icon of Poland, or
Poland in a nutshell, is the Wisła
river – the last wild river of
Europe of that size. A journey
down the Wisła from Kraków
to Gdańsk is an unusual journey
in time and nature. Key events
in the history of Poland, Europe
and the world have taken place
here. It is our national gem. The
Wisła can be covered in many
ways: on foot, horseback, by bike
or by kajak.
You can travel with your friends
and family, or alone.

172 Nature

Spa Resorts
Krystyna Kaszuba

Founder of Twój STYL (Your Style), the most popular Polish
magazine for women. Currently lectures on the Theory of
Exclusive Magazines at the University of Warsaw, Consultant,
advisory board Hubert Burda Media

The resort is beautifully situated in the heart of Mazurian
Landscape Park. The surrounding forest lends itself to relaxing
and energising long walks as well
as bicycle rides. This world-class
SPA boasts a state-of-the-art hotel, which is a synonym for luxury and the wellness approach.

The resort offers face and body
treatments using cosmetics
by Dr Irena Eris, which are not
available in regular stores but
are for SPA use only.
Before treatments begin a beautician tests the customer’s skin
and tailors the products to his or
her individual needs.

173

Maciej Zień

One of the most acclaimed
Polish fashion designers
Głęboczek Vine Resort & Spa >2
Wielki Głęboczek 1 , 78 km north
east of Torun, www.gleboczek.pl
This is the only resort in Poland
focused on vine therapy. Set
in a picturesque lake land, surrounded with a vineyard, it offers
such treats as wine baths, grape
pit body scrubs and lots of treatments with wine- and grapebased cosmetics. Other than that,
you can enjoy the aromatherapy
sauna, floral steam baths, relaxing
and detoxifying massages.

2

Wieliczka
Wieliczka Salt Mine Underground
Rehabilitation and Treatment Centre >3
Park Kingi 1, Wieliczka near Kraków, www.kopalnia.pl
This facility is located 135 metres below the ground level, in the
UNESCO-listed salt mine in Wieliczka that dates back to 13th century. It is probably the only spa where you will be handed a hard hat
before starting the treatment. The air in the underground chamber
is naturally bacteria-free and it contains large quantities of sodium
chloride and magnesium and calcium ions. This unique subterranean
health facility is particularly beneficial in treating lower and upper
tract respiratory system diseases, as well as allergies, skin diseases,
and metabolic disorders.
3

174 Ideas

Ideas
It is not an overstatement to say that for
centuries Poland was a land of great ideas
rather than a land of impressive things. In
aÂ country so frequently ravaged by wars
and other disasters, it was rarely possible to
amass and hold on to material wealth: from
art collections, libraries and Â­family jewels,
to bridges and factories. At the same time,
philosophy, mathematics, music, theatre
and poetry thrived in the adversity of a
challenging history, even when books and
scripts were the first to burn. Poland has
been enjoying an unprecedented period
of stability and prosperity in the past
twenty years, further strengthened from
the moment it joined the European Union.
Industry, technology, science, architecture,
design and other fields that need a secure
Â­environment are developing again, making
up for decades of negligence. But without
the continued history of great ideas, they
would be like a house with no foundations

Film
The Polish Film School, or Polska Szkoła
Filmowa, is a somewhat nostalgic term
for the time when Polish cinema mattered
most, both nationally and internationally
“One thing is certain, never before and never again was so much great
talent revealed, so many great pictures made and cinema reached such
an important position in culture, and was received by the public with
so much passion engagement”, wrote the film critic Alicja Helman
about the period between 1956 and 1961.
The phenomenon was created mostly by alumni of the Łódź film
school who took advantage of a relatively relaxed political atmosphere in the country in 1956 and decided to talk about things that
had been hitherto taboo in the communist country. The recent experience of Second World War and of stalinism, depicted frankly,
beyond both communist and nationalist-conservative stereotypes,
became subject for debut films by now classic directors such as Andrzej Wajda, Stanisław Różewicz and Andrzej Munk. Wajda’s Kanał,
awarded the Special Jury Prize in Cannes in 1957, is a benchmark of
the Polish Film School with its bitter portrayal of young people who
have lost everything in the Warsaw uprising and are making their
way through the city’s underground canals to escape from a besieged
neighbourhood. Andrzej Munk chose a more ironic approach in his
Bad Luck (Zezowate szczęście), a story of a Zelig-like figure who gets
into all sorts of trouble throughout Poland’s tumultuous history.
The Polish Film School often looked into literary classics for
inspiration, adapting famous Polish novels and novellas, and commissioned leading Polish novelists and playwrights to write scripts.
Cinematography, often black and white was another strength of The
PFS, which was allowed for not just by talent of cinematographers
but also by the slow pace of production. The class of ’56 was just a beginning. More and more alumni of the Łódź school followed suit: Roman Polański, who shot only one film in Poland, Knife in the Water,
before making Repulsion and Cul-de-sac in England, and Wojciech
Jerzy Has, who still mesmerizes film lovers around the world with
his cult classics: The Saragossa Manuscript and The Hour Glass Sanatorium.
If you feel like taking a trip back in time, visit the Cinematography
Museum in Łódź, which collects posters, costumes, sets, film stills and
other memorabilia, not just from the fifties and the sixties, but from
the whole century-long history of Polish cinema. When in Warsaw,
look out for The Best of Polish Movies – regular screenings of Polish
classic with subtitles in English or Spanish, at the National Library.

177

An open-air screening at the
Market Square in Wrocław
during the New Horizons festival.

1

Kuba Mikurda

Critic, translator, editor, works for
the Department of Contemporary
Culture at the Jagiellonian University
New Horizons >1
Wrocław, July
The most interesting landmarks
on the map of Polish film festivals. For more than 10 years, the
NH has consistently expanded
the aesthetic horizons of Polish
audiences – it presents the
discoveries of major festivals
worldwide, organises reviews for
specific authors and the cinema
of nations whose works do not
receive much attention otherwise, going beyond the borders
of the cinema and visual arts. The
showcase of the festival is a competition associated with a specific
and distinct type of aesthetics.
The NH competition values experimentation, contemplative
cinema, no-plot scripts, cinema
that forces the viewer to abandon his or her habits, provoking
new ways of watching. The NH
is also the NH space – collateral
events, including exhibitions,

workshops, debates, numerous
publications (the NH has already
published more than 20 books),
and the cycle New Horizons
of Film Education, targeted at
young audiences and carried out
in co-operation with cinemas and
schools across Poland. During the
ten days of the festival, Wrocław
becomes a city of cinephiles – you
can often see people deeply engaged in film debates, sometimes
in the strangest of circumstances.
Foreign viewers will be glad to
find out that the vast majority of
films are screened with English
subtitles.
Watch Docs.
Human Rights in Film
Warsaw, December
A festival organised by people
who believe that even if the films
themselves don’t change the
world, the viewers who watch
them can change a lot, indeed.

Animator Poznań, July
Those who are hungry for more
cinema should add the festival
to their list, as it isthe biggest
animated film festival in Poland,
which takes place every year with
outstanding guests from around
the world.
American Film Festival
Wrocław, November
It bears testimony to the fact
that the continent of American
cinema – seemingly familiar and
acknowledged – is for us still terra
incognita.
Summer Film Academy
Zwierzyniec, August
Fans of holiday film tourism
should venture to Zwierzyniec
for a festival which merges ambitious repertoire with picturesque
natural setting.

178 Ideas

Performing Arts
Poland has more than 140 publicly funded
and private theatres. The Polish Theatre
School, deeply immersed in Poland’s history
and tradition, with a courageous critical
approach to reality, has resulted in a truly
rich theatrical scene
Jerzy Grotowski (1933–1999) is one of the foremost figures in
the Polish School and is world renowned as one of the greatest
reformers in the history of theatre. Grotowski transformed theatre
into a research laboratory. He believed that the actor and spectator
were the most important factors in a performance. In addition to
his work in Poland, Grotowski conducted international workshops
and towards the end of his life relocated to Pontedera, Italy, where
in 1986 he established the Work centre of Jerzy Grotowski and
Thomas Richards. In the peace and quiet of the Tuscan countryside,
Grotowski carefully selected apprentices from around the world
and conducted experimental research into his ‘ritual arts’. To this
day Grotowski’s artistic heirs continue this research in artistic
exploration.
Another internationally recognised artist is Tadeusz Kantor
(1915–1990), the creator of Zero Theatre (otherwise known as ‘performance without action’), Informal Theatre (chance events and movements) and the Theatre of Death. Kantor treated props and actors on
equal terms and staged his works as happenings.
The next years have witnessed the emergence of new generations of theatrical artists who have also been very well received in
theatres throughout Europe. This group includes Krzysztof Warlikowski, Grzegorz Jarzyna, Krystian Lupa and Jan Klata. Warlikowski is a theatre and opera director, who specialises in theatre
of the antiquity, William Shakespeare (11 plays) and contemporary
drama. Warlikowski’s productions subtly address contemporary
social issues. He is a student of Krystian Lupa’s, known throughout
Europe for his treatment of the human condition in our Eurocentric-Christian world. Jan Klata uses classics of Polish literature to
confront contemporary social phenomena.

179

Tadeusz Kantor emerged as one
of the most important figures of
the 20th-century Polish theatre,
successfully transcending
national and cultural borders.

180 Ideas

Performing Arts

1

2

181

Maciej Nowak

Director of the Raszewski
Theatre Institute in Warsaw,
recommends the most
important Polish theatre
and dance festivals

Warszawskie Spotkania
Teatralne (Warsaw Theatre
Meetings) > 2
Warsaw, April
The most significant festivals.
These events, revived in 2008
after an eight-year hiatus, have
been re-established as a grand
celebration of Polish culture, to
the great acclaim of theatre fans
(some 8,000 spectators).
Prapremiery (Pre-premieres)
Bydgoszcz, October
A competition of the previous
season’s premiere performances
from throughout Poland.
Kraków’s Reminiscencje
(October) dates back to
1975, though the format was
refreshed in 2003 giving it more
programmatic integrity and
making it one of the most highly
regarded theatre festivals in
Poland and abroad.

There are many theatre festivals
in Poland and they are extremely
popular among theatregoers
throughout Europe. The festivals
primarily serve to provide an
overview of performances from
all over Poland, but also to delineate
general trends of development

Warszawa Centralna >1
(Warsaw Central Station)
Warsaw, October
Organised by Teatr Dramatyczny, it aims to reshape Poland
as a phantasmagorical space
and the site of exploratory
undertakings by various cultures
and nations.
R@port Gdynia
Gdynia, May
The repertoire of this festival is
grounded in a cognitive effort to
capture the elements of social
discourse that can be addressed
by theatre.

Dialog
Wrocław, October
An international festival
organised in Wrocław where
artists from around the world
perform their most important
plays.
Ciało/Umysł (Body/Mind
Festival of Dance Theatre)
Warsaw, October – November
Champions courageous and
inquisitive artists for whom
the starting points for stage
performances are the flesh and
the spirit.

182 Ideas

Music

1

183

Jacek Skolimowski

Music journalist, radio host and DJ recommends
the best music festivals for every ear and every
pair of feet

Recently, Poland has seen an explosion of music festivals
– from big pop and rock events to ambitious alternative
and contemporary music showcases

Summer and autumn bring on the
biggest musical events.
Heineken Open’er Festival
Gdynia, beginning of July
For almost ten years it has been
promoting the biggest and most
important mainstream acts from
all over the world – from the
Chemical Brothers and Massive Attack, to Coldplay, Kings
Of Leon and Arctic Monkeys.
Off Festival >1
Katowice, beginning of August
More focused on presenting
alternative music and discovering promising artists from the
independent scene. The person
responsible for the line-up is
Artur Rojek from the popular
Polish rock band Myslovitz. If the
Open’er Festival is like Poland’s
Glastonbury, then the Off Festival is more like Barcelona’s
Primavera Sound, a place
to discover budding talent.
Unsound Festival
Kraków, October
Fans of electronic music will certainly appreciate the ambitious
festival. It started seven years
ago as a small event mostly for

German, Australian and Polish
experimental artists. And now
it’s one of the best events in Europe for all the new genres like
dubstep, radical like noise and
demanding like neo-classical.
Audioriver
Płock, Summer
For the fans of more dance beats
there’s a really nice event called
Audioriver – every summer on
a beach by the Wisła in Płock. It’s
the best place for all night parties with the best djs and live acts
playing everything from techno,
drum’n’bass, breakbeat, house,
electro and minimal.
Burn Selector Festival
Kraków, June
Completely new thing on the
festival map is, organized for the
third time in 2011, with a more
and more ambitious line-up.
Old vs. New
Poland has also its own rich tradition of festivals like Jazz Jamboree or the contemporary music
showcase Warsaw Autumn,
both over 50 years old. They still
enjoy much attention and certainly a great deal of respect, but

have to compete with younger
events. For the jazz music it’s
Warsaw Summer Jazz Days
and for contemporary music it’s
Sacrum Profanum in Kraków.
Even the legendary Jarocin
festival, which in the eighties
was a place, where Polish punkrock was born, has to compete.
Przystanek Woodstock, a completely free event organised in
Kostrzyn, right by the PolishGerman border, draws up to even
by 400,000 – 500,000 people
each year.
Warsaw
To get in touch with the most interesting independent Polish music, simply visit Warsaw anytime,
the largest and most diverse centre of musical innovation. Of special note is the label Lado ABC,
which has been growing for ten
years now. The protagonist here
is Macio Moretti, leader of the
band Mitch&Mitch, which started as a spoof country combo, but
now comes up with exquisitely
arranged style-surfing pieces.
Moretti also plays drums in teh
wacky jazz group Baaba and the
project ParisTetris, where he
is joined by the pianist Marcin
Masecki and the Argentinianborn singer Candelaria Saenz.

184 Ideas

Books
The three most prolific Polish writers
around the world are poets: Tadeusz
Różewicz (50 languages) and two Nobel
Prize winners, Czesław Miłosz (45
languages) and Wisława Szymborska (41
languages). An interesting phenomenon
is the unrelenting fascination with the
works of Stanisław Lem – 90 of his books
have been published in 42 languages,
notwithstanding 76 different anthology
contributions

Olga Tokarczuk

Antoni Libera

Andrzej Stasiuk

Novelist and essayist who chose
to live in a small village in the
Sudety mountains, where she
perfects her own brand of magic
al realism. Prawiek i inne czasy (Primeval and Other Times) has been
translated into Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Czech,
Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish,
French, German, Italian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Romanian,
Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish,
Swedish and Ukrainian.

Carefully examines the meanderings of Central European history
and culture in his reportage novel
Jadąc do Babadag (On the Way to
Babadag), translated into Albanian, Bulgarian, Czech, Dutch,
Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Russian, Serbian,
Slovenian and Ukrainian.

Dorota Masłowska
Paweł Huelle
A Tricity author who has written
a tale about a mysterious child
set in Stalinist-era Gdańsk. Weiser
Dawidek (Who Was David Weiser?)
has been translated into: Czech,
Dutch, English, Finnish, French,
Hebrew, German, Italian, Norwegian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish

Novelist and playwright, has won
the nation’s heart with her debut
‘chav novel’, Wojna polsko-ruska
pod flagą biało-czerwoną (Snow
White and Russian Red). Her inventive use of colloquial Polish has
been more or less faithfully translated into Czech, Dutch, English,
French, German, Hungarian, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Spanish
and Ukrainian.

185

Warsaw’s Czuły Barbarzyńca
(the Gentle Barbarian) >1 was
not the first bookshop-cum-café
in Poland but certainly the one
that defined the moment and

started the craze that does not
seem to end. You will find similar
places in every respectable
Polish city.

Set a trend for crime novels full
of periodic details. The first of
Eberhardt Mock’s investigations
Śmierć w Breslau (Death in Breslau),
set in the pre-war German city
of Wrocław has been translated
into Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, German, Hungarian, Italian,
Slovak, Spanish and Ukrainian.

Jacek Dehnel
Poet and novelist known for his
nostalgic eye for detail and a taste
for elaborate vocabulary. His Lala
(Dolly) has been translated into
German, Hebrew, Hungarian
Italian, Lithuanian, Slovak and
Turkish.

186 Ideas

Visual Arts

Piotr Bazylko,
Krzysztof
Masiewicz
Collectors and lovers of
contemporary Polish art.
They write a blog about
the Polish art market
called ArtBazaar

The past twenty years in Poland have
been a period of great political and
social transformation, as well as
a time for the expansion of art spaces
– new public and private collections
have been created and new galleries
opened. Furthermore, it has been
a time of great international triumph
for P
­ olish artists. Nowadays, the art
of Paweł Althamer, Mirosław Bałka,
Michał Budny, Rafał Bujnowski,
Tomasz Kowalski, Katarzyna Kozyra,
Marcin Maciejowski, Wilhelm Sasnal,
Monika Sosnowska, Jakub Julian
Ziółkowski and Artur Żmijewski
is recognised by curators, gallery
owners and collectors worldwide.
Private galleries, actively promoting
Polish art around the world, have
made the greatest contribution to the
expansion of Polish art abroad.
Still, the most recent Polish art is
more than just the big names. Polish
galleries, both public and private,
showcase works of many young
artists. These venues deserve a closer
inspection

187

1

Kolonie
ul. Bracka 23 apt. 52, tue – sat:
The Foksal Gallery Foundation >1 3 – 8 pm, www.galeriakolonie.pl
ul. Górskiego 1A, www.fgf.com.pl
The youngest of Warsaw’s institutions comprises a gallery
They put Polish art onto the
and a publishing house, Kolonie
international stage. Aside from
organising exhibitions, FGF often specialises in the latest trends in
Polish contemporary art.
engages in projects in the public
space. FGF is also the founder
of Avant-Garde Institute in the
Leto
former studio of the late artist
ul. Hoża 9c, visits by appointment:
Edward Krasiński.
501 696 440, www.leto.pl
Warsaw

One of Warsaw’s most dynamically growing galleries. This is
where many famous debuts by
artists from the youngest generation took place.

Located in a marvellously renovated second-floor flat of a midtown tenement house. Exceptional art projects by top artists from
the youngest and middle generation make for a worthwhile visit.

Lokal_30
ul. Foksal 17b #30,
wed – fri: 4pm – 7 pm, lokal30.pl
Housed in a small apartment in an
old tenement house by ul. Foksal
in the very heart of Warsaw, the

gallery debuted on the international art market at the 2006
Viennafair, where its presentation
won the main award.
Raster www.raster.art.pl
Founded in 2001, the gallery
immediately became a symbol
of the new generation of both
artists and collectors. Today, it is
one of the most prominent Polish
galleries, present at such prestigious fairs as Art Basel and Art
Basel Miami Beach. Raster is also
a venue for various performances
and meetings with authors.
Kraków
Zderzak Gallery
ul. Floriańska 3, www.zderzak.pl
Founded in 1985, the gallery is
one of the most important exhibition spaces on the Polish art
market. Zderzak was the first to

188 Ideas

Visual Arts

Gdańsk
Wyspa Institute of Art
ul. Doki 1/145 B, 12-6 pm tue–
sun, www.wyspa.art.pl
Founded in 2004 on the grounds
of the legendary Gdańsk shipyard,
the Institute became one of Poland’s leading cultural institutions.
Wyspa is the first Polish non-profit
institution with international outreach to be run by a non-governmental organisation dealing in
contemporary art culture.
Poznań
1

Piekary Gallery
ul. Piekary 5, 1st floor,
mon – fri: 10 am – 5 pm
www.galeria-piekary.com.pl
Presents the art of the 20th and
21st centuries, paying particular
attention to avant-garde trends.
Stereo Gallery >2
ul. Słowackiego 36/1,
www.galeriastereo.pl
The youngest and most dynamic
of Poznań’s galleries specialises in
what is most recent in Polish art.
The gallery serves as a space for
individual and group exhibitions
that convey the most captivating
of the current trends in Polish art .
2

Łódź
re-discover Andrzej Wróblewski,
one of the most interesting Polish
painters of the 20th century. It
was here that the 1999 and 2000
debuts of Ładnie Group artists
took place.
Galeria ZPAF I S-ka
ul. św. Tomasza 24, www.zpafiska.pl
The gallery focuses on presenting
and promoting photography as
a medium of contemporary art

and organises an annual photography festival (Photomonth).
Starmach Gallery >1
ul. Węgierska 5, mon – fri:
11 am – 6 pm, www.starmach.com.pl
Located in a redecorated interior
of a Jewish prayer house in the
Podgórze district of Kraków, the
gallery is run by Andrzej Starmach, who specialises in contemporary Polish classics.

Galeria Atlas Sztuki
ul. Piotrkowska 114/116,
tue – fri: 4 – 8 pm,
www.atlassztuki.pl
Atlas is a small private gallery
whose exhibition program outrivals that of many public institutions. It is here that many exhibits
and debuts important on the national scale have been held.

189

1

The Poster Museum >1
ul. Stanisława Kostki-Potockiego
10/16, Warsaw,
mon: 12pm – 4 pm, tue – fri:
10am – 4pm, sat – sun: 10am – 6pm
A small pavilion next to the
Wilanów royal palace opened
in 1968, when the Polish Poster
School was already an internationally recognised phenomenon,
as the first such institution in the
world. The genre was born in the

mid-fifties when the film industry
and state propaganda machine
started to commission artists
to design posters for countless events and occasions. They
were free to experiment with the
form so long as the content was
politically tame. The resulting
posters still stun with innovative
typography and witty metaphors.
Each of the leading artists, such
as Roman Cieślewicz, Henryk
Tomaszewski, Jan Lenica, Jan

Młodożeniec, Waldemar Świerzy,
Wojciech Zamecznik, developed
their trademark styles, ranging from expressive free-hand
drawing to extremely minimalist.
The spirit and quality live on in
the young generation of Polish
graphic designers presented at
the museum, along with the best
of international poster art, at the
International Poster Biennale
organised by the museum every
other year.

190 Ideas

Education

Warsaw School of Economics
(SGH) is one of the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s
most prestigious universities.

191

The most important centres for higher ­
edu­cation are in Warsaw, Kraków,
Wrocław, Poznań, Łódź and the
Tricity area (Gdańsk / Gdynia / Sopot).
Poland currently has nearly 2,000,000
students (including 15,800 foreigners)
attending its 458 institutions of higher
education (132 state-owned,
326 private)
The most popular courses of studies are economics, business and
public administration (23% of students), social sciences (13.9%), education (12%), liberal arts (8.8%), engineering (6.8%), medicine (5.8%),
computer sciences (4.9%), public services (3.7%), law (3.1%), environmental protection (1.4%) and other (16.4%).
Warsaw’s 66 universities and colleges, attended by 300,000 students, give it by far the largest concentration of post-secondary education in Poland. The capital city is home to such renowned institutions as Warsaw University, the Warsaw School of Economics, the
Warsaw School of Social Science and Humanities, the Academy of
Fine Arts, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, the Fryderyk Chopin
University of Music and the Warsaw University of Technology
The ‘Most’ programme enables students to participate in parallel studies at several different universities at the same time and is
extremely popular among Polish students. The Erasmus programme
brings a growing number of foreign students to Poland. Many of them
begin their stay in the country by learning Polish at the School of Polish for Foreigners at the University of Łódź (www.sjpdc.uni.lodz.pl).

192 Ideas

Science
A century may have passed since Polandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s
last Nobel Prize in science (for Maria
SkĹ&#x201A;odowska-Curie), but the spirit of
innovation lives on
Polish scientists are patenting global industrial production of graphene, a miraculous material that is set revolutionise electronics over the next decade. Poland is the first country in the world to
be capable of producing it on an industrial scale. Graphene means
smaller, cheaper and much faster computers. Discovered in 2004,
one gram of graphene can cover several football pitches. But that
is not all. With better conductivity than copper it is one hundred
times stronger than steel. Graphene was invented at the Institute
of Materials Technology (ITME) in Warsaw. The ITME is now working on obtaining an international patent for mass production. Scientists from the ITME devised a way of transferring production of
graphene from the laboratory to industrial scale using equipment
that had been used for years in the manufacture of semiconductor
structures. Scientists believe that in 10 years the full miniaturisation
of silicon-based systems will end and graphene will replace it. It is
likely that EU funds will be available to support the development of
graphene, with the 10-year Flagship programme starting in 2012 and
a budget of EUR 100 million.

193

Graphene is so thin that it would
take three million sheets of it to
form a one millimeter layer.

194 Ideas

Science

Gallium nitride >1

Robert
Firmhofer
Director of the Copernicus
Science Centre in Warsaw,
recommends three exciting
new projects by Polish
scientists

The first noteworthy project is
a new technology developed by
the company Ammono. This small
company, which has yet to make
a name for itself, has developed
a new method for synthesising the best, biggest and purest
crystals of gallium nitride. This
discovery has put Ammono on the
cutting edge of innovation in the
21st century. PhD students at the
Warsaw Polytechnic and Warsaw
university founded the company
10 years ago. Much like silicon,
gallium nitride is a semiconductor,
although it has many additional
physical properties, such as the
capacity to emit light. Gallium
nitride crystals are already used
to produce Blu-ray lasers and in
the future they will most likely
revolutionise the market for laser
projectors. The new technology
makes it possible to miniaturize equipment while maintaining
high resolution and colour quality.
Thanks to the methods developed
in Poland, computers should soon
be shrunk down to unthinkably
small dimensions and miniature
devices will be able to project high
- quality images on-demand wherever we want, for example on any
wall. Gallium nitride is also used
to produce light-emitting diodes
and in electrical switching devices. New gallium-nitride based
semiconductors will increase the
capacity of electrical circuitry
to handle higher voltages and
frequencies, resulting in greater
energy efficiency for many types
of equipment, including electrical
and hybrid automobiles. One of
the biggest problems for electrical
cars is their limited range. More
efficient gallium nitride crystals
will make it possible to extend
considerably battery capacity
without an increase in size. The
team of young scientists at Am-

mono are continuing the best
Polish traditions in semi-conductor research, harking back to Jan
Czochralski, the inventor of the
method for synthesising single
crystals. The Czochralski method
of growing single crystals of silicon is used to this day in the mass
production of microprocessors.
Cardiac surgery robots
The second important project
brings together high technology
and the medical sciences. Scientists at the Foundation for the
Development of Cardiosurgery
(founded by the late Dr. Zbigniew
Religa) have created a series of
cardiac surgery robots known as
the Robin Heart Family. The team
is also working on an artificial
heart. The Robin Heart robots are
high-precision surgical devices for
use in cardiac surgery. Currently,
the only country that produces
cardiac surgery robots is the United States. The Polish-designed
robots currently being developed
will represent an advance on
American technology in this area
and are the only such under development in Europe. The robots
greatly reduce the invasive nature
of cardiac surgery and decrease
risks associated with surgery for
the patient. They also make it
possible to conduct operations at
a distance (teleoperations). During such an operation, an advisor
supports the robot operator with
an intelligent database containing all clinical data on the patient.
The new Polish robot is still being
tested and has not yet been used
to operate on a human being. The
most advanced operations to
date have been on pigs, including
open-heart surgery conducted via
tele-operation in February 2011
by two clinics miles apart from
each other in Silesia, in southern
Poland.

195

1

Plant nervous system
The third project presents a discovery by the Polish biologist
Stanislaw Karpinski. After many
years of working in Sweden, and
thanks to the Welcome programme of the Foundation for
Polish Science, Prof. Karpinski
recently returned to Poland. His
team discovered that plants have
a primitive nervous system. They
noted that plants have the capacity and a mechanism to share in-

formation about the type of light
that shines on particular leaves of
a plant. The team researched how
plants record information about
the intensity of sunlight and its
colour. Intra-leaf communication is facilitated, as it turns out,
by a flow of electrical impulses,
similar to an animal’s nervous
system, but functioning at a much
slower speed. This highly complex
mechanism also involves processing of signals from quantum to analogue/electro-physiological in-

formation. Karpiński’s discovery
means that to fully understand
plant life we need not only biology, but also to look to the realms
of physics and mathematics. This
not only expands our understanding of the plant world, but also
shows us that plants are much
more closely related to animals
than we previously thought. The
manner in which plants process
information suggests analogies
with quantum computers.

196 Ideas

Economy

1

2

197

The Polish economy, eh? Where to start?
A big small country, a small big ­countr­y?
Poland’s perennial question. A major
­European powerhouse or a backwater
supplying cheap labour?
The country – and its economy – is marked by its history in a way few
others are, even in Central Europe. A product in many ways still of
the partitions of the 19th century, a prosperous, ‘Germanic’ west and
south-west, with Poznań and Szczecin’s major economic and financial centres, Katowice and Silesia’s major producers of (nasty, nasty)
coal-driven energy. Then the backward east, the forgotten east, with
its stereotypical, almost 19th century feel, its over-populated dilapidated ‘collective’ farms, a source of cheap labour in Manchester,
Sheffield, Chicago…Berlin?
An agricultural country with some industry or an industrial
country with a large rural population? A post-industrial country,
with booming services, high tech and progressive, big on design
software, highly trained mathematicians and computer literature
graduates? Yes, Poland is still a land of fascinating disjointedness.
All the above are true and all are in themselves also meaningless
without qualification and context. Infuriating and fascinating in equal
measure. A nation of rude shopkeepers, awful Byzantine bureaucracy, but one full of start-up firms, entrepreneurs schooled in perhaps
a more ruthless, ambitious and smart form of capitalism than many
outsiders might imagine. Many forged in doing their business in a centralised demand-driven economy have some entrepreneurial skills
that many western business school graduates could take lessons from.
Not the fancy theoretical stuff, perhaps (although there is also enough
of that to go round), but in the practical, the pragmatic mechanics of
getting things done, bypassing, negotiating the bureaucracy. Pricing,
competition, ‘getting to market,’ are just some of the wonderful things
about capitalism that 40 years of state socialism taught the Poles!
Nothing is impossible in this country. That should be its motto. A place
that thrives at the crossroads of many business cultures.
Poland now has Europe’s sixth-biggest economy. It was the only
country in the European Union to note economic growth in 2010. As
such its borrowing needs are easily and relatively cheaply financed,
with lenders’ generosity allowing the government to run a budget
deficit of about 7% of GDP. In some part Poland’s relative immunity
from the bitter winds of the global financial crisis is due to its relative
backwardness, its banks, for example, arriving late to the foreign-currency lending party that hit, for example Latvia and Hungary. Pension

>1 Polish industry is
more and more focused
on quality products, for
instance turning out
custom made yachts.
>2 The DNA Research

Centre in Poznań uses
the latest technology
for early diagnosis of
cancer .

198 Ideas

Economy

reform, modernisation of the roads and railways (2,000km of new fast
roads will be built by 2012, when Poland and Ukraine co-host the European football championships) should underpin the slow shifting reform process. Rising public debt and a stubbornly high budget deficit
are worth watching, but this is not Athens!
This country of 38.5 million people are it seems close to shedding the ‘emerging market’ label.Many Polish factories have become
part of the German supply chain because of Poland’s high productivity and low wages. The country will not meet the technical requirements for euro membership until 2015 at the earliest, but that may
in fact help. Poland has a balanced economy, big on energy, agriculture, manufacturing, high tech research and development. It also has
a large internal economy. Since 2004, when Poland joined the EU and
had access to EU structural funds, unemployment has remained perniciously high, but inflation is lowish (at about 3-3.5% – close to the
upper limit of the National Bank of Poland’s target rate).
Clean energy and high tech manufacturing are areas that Poland
can thrive as it moves away from the old models, a post-industrial economy based on diversified services and high tech solutions. Poland’s shale
gas potential, for example, has been estimated at between 1.5 trillion cubic meters (tcm) and 3 tcm. Shale gas potential of 1.5 tcm would mean
that Poland has a near 200 year supply of gas beneath its soil. Insiders
said the sector could become commercially viable in the next 5-10 years.
Another interesting area, that highlights how potentially decaying industrial areas, and communities, can reinvent themselves is the luxury
yacht market. Poland’s yachting industry is experiencing phenomenal
growth and is set to become a European yacht-building hub, whose
products are marked by high quality and low prices. Poland’s yacht production sector has grown more than fivefold over the last five years. In
2010, the value of its sales reached almost $500 million, giving Poland
about five percent of a global market that is currently valued at around
$11.5 billion. Overall about 95 percent of all luxury yachts made in Poland
are sold abroad and about 90 percent of this figure is sold to clients in
the EU and the USA. Italy, the world’s largest luxury yacht maker, exports 65 percent of its total production.

199

Solaris coaches get commuters
around in cities all over Europe
â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from Athens to Warsaw, from
PoznaĹ&#x201E; to Munich. 60 % of the
production is exported abroad.

Krzysztof
Olszewski
Founder and manyyear president of the
Supervisory Board of
Solaris Bus & Coach
S.A., manufacturer of
city and intercity buses,
coaches, trolleybuses,
special buses and trams

Poland is my favourite
country to work in
because of all the enormous
possibilities that it offers.
You can thrive in many
areas here: arts, sport
or economy.

200 Ideas

Stock Exchange

Marx is rolling in his grave:
the Warsaw Stock Exchange
headquarters was built right next
to the former communist party
headquarters.

201

Contrary to many perceptions, Poland
has a long history of equity and even early
derivatives trading. The first stock exchange
in Warsaw was opened in 1817.
The modern Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE)
began operating in its present form in 1991
and is now the largest bourse in both Central
Europe and Eastern Europe
The market value of domestic companies traded in Warsaw is about €120
billion, compared with €73 billion listed in Vienna, Warsaw’s nearest rival in the region. Trading volumes were also higher than for competing
markets, at nearly €25 billion, compared with €20.7 billion each in Vienna
and Athens. However, looking west, there is still some way to go. The market value of domestic companies listed at the SIX exchange in Zurich was
€802.6 billion and in Frankfurt at €903.2 billion. Trading volumes leapt
70% in 2010 after the government floated several large companies: PZU in
May in a $2.5 billion IPO and also sold its majority stake in electric energy
utility Tauron in June in an IPO worth $1.3 billion — bucking the trend
across Europe. The two offers were among the five largest in Europe in
the second quarter of last year. The Warsaw bourse was also the IPO market leader by total value, with seven companies raising a total of €3.1 billion in the second quarter on the regulated market.
The government has been seeking a buyer for the WSE for
some time, but after several failed projects, including an attempt
to sell to Frankfurt-based Deutsche Boerse, there is no buyer in
signt. In 2009 the exchange invited four international exchanges
to buy the bourse - London Stock Exchange, Deutsche Boerse, Nasdaq
OMX and NYSE Euronext. The effort fell through in the final weeks of
2009 because of a lackluster response to the offering. In November 2010
the government offered 63% of shares to the public. The WSE sale is the
pearl in Poland’s privatisation drive which aims to raise PLN 25 billion
(6.36 billion euros) to plug a public deficit due to balloon to 7% of GDP
this year, more than double the 3% of GDP EU limit.
The WSE is a joint-stock company created by the State Treasury
and has 38 different shareholders. These shareholders are a mixture
of brokerage houses, banks, the State Treasury and a listed company.
The main trade organisations operating in Warsaw are the EU, the
TWO and the OECD. There are currently 274 companies listed on the
WSE. Some examples of these companies are Netia, the TP Group,
Grupa LOTOS, KGHM Polska Miedz SA and Bank Pekao SA.

202 Ideas

Design

Agnieszka
JacobsonCielecka
Design critic and
curator, co-founder
and long time editorin-chief of the Polish
edition of Elle Décor,
curator of the October
Łódź Design festival

What makes Polish young designers stand
out? Thirtysomethings eagerly reach for
simple, inexpensive, natural and readily
available materials: wood, OSB, MDF,
felt, semi-finished products or reclaimed
materials. They often make their products
themselves or with the help of local
craftsmen, in very limited quantities. Many
designs are characterised by a perverse
sense of humour and irony, shying from
convention
They are often informed by Polish tradition, material culture and
craft. In these days of globalisation and easy access to standardised
technologies, uniqueness and provenance have become priceless.
Reaching back to the roots, Polish designers exploit local resources.
They replicate traditional ornamentation, colour schemes and
decoration motifs and re-work and re-interpret old patterns.
Young Polish design is a perfect symbiosis of natural resources and
advanced technology. The projects show an appetite for the new
without forsaking the old. Designers like Azé hire local artisans,
create jobs and unleash the need to return to primary sources. The
most spectacular example of innovative use of folk inspiration
combined with the high-tech is the Polish pavilion designed for the
Expo 2010 in Shanghai by WWAA Architects (Natalia Paszkowska
and Marcin Mostafa). The basic idea of the project was to distinguish the country visually. Hence the motif of folk cut-outs, applied
onto a modern form. The basic finishing elements of the pavilion
were made of plywood. From the outside, filler panels were made of
glass, polycarbon and insulated laminate were mounted on to the
modules, water and UV resistant materials.
Anyone interested in the visual side of everyday life in Poland
should check out the Polish Advertisement Festival in Warsaw,
every year in April or May, AD Days in Łódź (end of November) and
the Photomonth in Kraków that opens in May.

These toys were designed by
Monika WilczyĹ&#x201E;ska i Smaga
Projektanci.

>2 Puff Buff Design are making

waves around the world with
their inflatable PVC lamps.

204 Ideas

Design

Chances are that you are sitting
on a Polish sofa when reading
this book. Poland is the fourth
largest furniture manufacturer
in the world, surpassed only by
China, USA and Italy.

205

Tomek
Rygalik
Industrial designer,
lives and works in
Warsaw. Academic
at the London Royal
College of Art. Studied
architecture and design
in Łódź, New York and
London. Designs for
Italian, Finnish and
Polish companies.
Contributed to the
special line of furniture
produced for the Polish
EU Presidency in 2011
(opposite page, left)

What is the best
thing in Poland?
Forests and wood
Poland is a furniture manufacturer of
­European and worldwide renown. We
produced mainly wooden furniture, which
in my opinion, forms our material culture
and is part of our identity. Talking to many
people from across the world, I found out
that wood is very much associated with
Poland. Wood is an essential material for
us Poles. Obviously, it comes from forests,
and just as Poland is famous for being
Europe’s third and the world’s fourth
furniture manufacturer – Polish forests
and landscapes are also its landmarks. Be
it in Mazury (Masuria) among the lakes,
or in Tatry (Tatra Mountains), there are
beautiful forests everywhere in Poland, both
coniferous and leafy. vI often visit various
places in Poland, among others Bieszczady
(mountain range in southern Poland) or
Kociewie – a region near Bory Tucholskie
(Poland’s largest pine tree forest complex).
I have always been surrounded by forest, it’s
inspirational. The forest is something truly
beautiful – something we can recommend to
people from other countries.

Editorial team
Grzegorz Piątek, Jo Harper,
Ewelina Bartosik, Arkadiusz
Gruszczyński, Katarzyna Maniak,
Bogna Świątkowska
Bęc Zmiana New Culture
Foundation / www.funbec.eu
Published by
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
of the Republic of Poland in the
framework of the Polish Presidency in the EU Council (2011)

Life (page 17): Statistical Yearbook of the Republic of Poland
2010; Polish Census of 2002
Population of agglomerations
and cities (page 53): Union of
Polish Metropolis
Nature (page 151): Statistical
Yearbook of the Republic of
Poland 2010